The Second Sight
by BlackWolfHowling
Summary: At a town fair, Kaiba, Mokuba, and the gang meet a psychic. Kaiba, to humor his brother, puts up with her reading and everyone accepts a charm from her. Danger is coming to town and Kaiba will need to accept things unwillingly. Can the psychic help?
1. Do a reading for you?

__AN: I tried writing this same story before and I hated it. So older and (I hope) wiser and (I really hope) a better author, I'm trying again. The basic plan I have will have references to a school the OC went to. For those of you familiar with Psychic Academy, picture the basic idea of this school meets Yu-Gi-Oh! and for those of you not familiar with Psychic Academy you don't really need to be as this is not a crossover fic and merely a similar concept. I apologize if the first chapter isn't well-written as I'm writing this on no sleep and am writing without a beta. And for time-line purposes, this takes place shortly after the incident with Dartz.__

_Disclaimer: I own nothing but my OC._

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><p>Kaiba and Mokuba were walking around Domino City. Normally Kaiba would be working at this time of day, but there was a fair this weekend and he promised his brother he would take him as the fair fell on his birthday.<p>

It was a typical fair. Games, food stands, and other activities meant to be fun for everyone. Kaiba found himself bored, but as long as Mokuba was having fun he was satisfied.

After roughly half an hour he noticed that several people had necklaces and charm bracelets and similar items. He wouldn't have noticed it if the baubles weren't all similar in make and design and if it weren't for the fact that some of the people he saw with the jewelry weren't wearing them when they entered. After coming to the conclusion that it was a prize at one of the games he disregarded it. He was finally starting to enjoy himself at the fair when he heard Joey's distinct, and loud, voice.

"I'm telling you, she's actually psychic! Her reading was dead-on and I swear this charm she gave me has made me luckier already."

"Come on, Joey, she's probably been at this for years. She probably read your body language and told you what you _wanted_ to hear instead of actually reading your cards. Besides, you bought that charm because you failed her test and she did say that she was opening a small store. She's probably just _pretending_ to be psychic so that people will buy her good-luck charms," Yugi said patiently.

"Come on, Yugi, that test was completely unfair," Joey said, looking around as if the surrounding area would give him proof of this 'unfair test.' At that moment he spotted Kaiba and, for lack of anything else inspiring, continued speaking. "I bet even rich boy over there wouldn't have been able to notice it."

"I probably could, mutt," Kaiba said.

"Then prove it. That blue tent over there," Joey said, pointing towards the tent in question. "Prove that you can pass her test. Unless you're too scared."

Kaiba, not really interested in a bauble or what a so-called 'psychic' could do, but also not about to let his reputation be smeared by being labeled a coward, calmly walked over to the tent and stepped inside.

"Do a reading for you, sir?" A girl about his age asked, looking up from a table where she was organizing the trinkets he saw earlier.

"I'm merely here to prove a point," Kaiba said. "I'm not interested in your 'readings.'"

"Ah, a skeptic, I see," the girl said with an easy-going smile. "Don't worry, I'm not offended. You're not the first person who doesn't believe that's walked in to prove to the entire world that I'm a fraud."

"Like I said, I'm not interested in your readings," Kaiba said, starting to become impatient. "I'm simply proving a point about your 'test.'"

"I see," the girl said. "And would you be proving this point to the blond out there and his friends?" After the confirming nod she smiled and continued. "Well fortunately he was my last customer and I don't change anything until my 'test' has been passed. Though it's not really a test but a challenge. There's one thing, and one thing only about my appearance that isn't correct. Your challenge is to spot the one thing and if you get it right you get one of my charms for free. If you get it wrong, you can pay a small amount of money for a charm instead. Either way, my reading is free. But before we get started, let me introduce myself. My name is Lisa Beldon, a psychic and charm maker, and this is, at its core, an advertising stunt for a store I'm opening in a few weeks. I'll sell these charms and, for a fee, read people. I make all of my charms by hand and while I will not promise that they work, some people who have gotten one of my charms in the past will swear by them. Now that the shameless self-advertising is complete, you can start my little test. You can look at my appearance for as long as you want, unless of course during my little speech you've noticed the off thing about me and are ready to guess now. I warn you, though, you only get one try."

Kaiba studied her for a moment. She was fairly plain in appearance, black hair pulled back into a ponytail though he suspected when let down it would reach to about her shoulders. She was wearing a simple red long-sleeved shirt and black jeans, not your typical psychic's uniform. At her height of roughly 5'6 she was completely average. After a brief moment he smirked and, with complete confidence said, "You're wearing colored contacts. People with black hair don't have blue eyes."

Lisa smiled. "Very good, sir," she said. "You'd be surprised how many people think that people with black hair really do have blue eyes. Reaching up she quickly removed the contacts, proving that they were merely decorative and not prescription and, after putting them in a contact case looked up with what turned out to be very dark, nearly black, eyes. Stepping aside from the table she said, "You've won yourself a free charm. I can do a reading for you if you'd like. And given your skepticism and the fact that I do enjoy shocking skeptics like yourself, I'll give you a charm I don't have on display for free if you'll humor me and allow me a reading."

"What's the matter, Kaiba, scared of something you don't believe in?" Joey asked, trying to goad Kaiba into agreeing, a tactic that, surprisingly, worked yet again, though Kaiba more agreed because Mokuba looked interested than because of anything the 'mutt' said.

"Fine," he said walking towards a table that, presumably, Lisa did her readings at. "So tell me, where's your crystal ball?"

"Now, look, I'm being generous offering you a charm from the back. Those charms take longer to make than the ones I have on the table and I would appreciate it if you kept your sarcasm to yourself," Lisa said. "I don't read people using crystal balls, or looking into pools of liquid, and I don't read palms. There are very few people who actually use those methods and my skills don't lie there."

"Then what _do_ you do?" Kaiba asked, not keeping his disbelief out of his tone.

"I read cards. The cards I read with vary from Tarot cards to playing cards depending on where I am, but I chose this town specifically because the people here have the greatest interest in where my skills _actually_ lie. I heard that this town had an incident where the duel monster cards came to life or at least seemed to. The cards I have always been the strongest with are in fact duel monster cards, which the people of this town seem to use more frequently than eating utensils. Most people seem content to believe that it was merely a malfunction of their duel disks, but a few are aware that the cards are alive and have spirits." Seeing that Kaiba was bored and that he wanted to make a comment on how the cards weren't alive, she decided to cut her speech short. "Long story short, if you shuffle your deck, I will place the top four cards in front of me and tell you what they say. Sometimes I will get a reading of someone's future, rarely their past, but more the cards tell me about the people themselves and I get a decent picture of their present."

"You expect me to give you my cards and-" Kaiba was interrupted by Lisa in the middle of his rant.

"As collateral, while I'm holding onto your cards I will give you my own deck. While the cards aren't overly rare, they are valuable to me and are my most important possessions. And after I am done with the reading you are free to check your deck and if you find any cards missing or damaged I will pay you for it. If it turns out that my funds cannot cover the cost of the damaged card, I have papers that say that you get sixty percent of all of my store's profits until my debt has been paid in full and including whatever interest you place. Is this fair?" Having recognized her skeptic customer as Seto Kaiba of Kaiba Corp she quickly handed him the paper in question and allowed him to read it. After a few minutes of careful study, and a quiet plea from Mokuba, he nodded and pulled out his deck, setting it on the table.

"All right, before we begin here is my deck," Lisa said, sliding over her cards. "I need you to cut and shuffle your deck however you please, and since your brother has a question, while you're doing that I'll field any questions asked."

"What do you use for people who _don't_ have duel decks?" Mokuba asked.

"I have duel monsters cards in the back of the tent, behind the curtain I have set up. People without decks are free to study them, make a deck of 40 cards, and cut and shuffle them. And since your brother doesn't seem interested in his free charm, why don't you pick one out?"

"I probably should have asked this when we were here earlier, but do your charms mean anything?" Yugi asked.

"Most people assume that these are good luck charms, and most of them are," Lisa said. "However the ones that the boy is looking at are protection charms that ward off danger." Walking over she picked up a charm that had a rectangular prism-like gem in the center with two bead-shaped ones on either side. "I'd personally recommend this one for protection. It will help ward off spiritual attacks."

"No one attacks spirits anymore," Joey said, "We beat him in case you haven't heard."

"On the contrary," Lisa said. "I don't mean 'spiritual attacks' in the sense of someone trying to take one's spirit or a spirit trying to possess someone, though it will ward off those types of attacks as well. But when people shoot out harmful words or even physically attack you that also has an affect on your spirit. This charm helps keep the full effect of these attacks from reaching you, allowing you to bounce back from these attacks more quickly than you would otherwise."

"What kind of charms do we have? And how can we tell which charm has what property? They all have the same design." Yugi asked because, even though Joey was the only one who had a reading done and truly believed Lisa was psychic, all of them bought a charm as Lisa struck them as a nice person and they wanted to help her store out.

"The blond boy who I read earlier has a classic good-luck charm, I suspect he was drawn to it because it will enhance his own fairly uncanny good luck. Good-luck charms are signified by their pale yellow color. The brown-haired male has a protecting charm. It will help him defend his friends should the need arise. This charm is signified by it's light red color. The brown-haired female has a charm to enhance her charisma, making people more likely to listen to her. They are signified by a light purple or lilac color. Your white-haired friend has a spirit protection charm, much like the one I reccomended to him. They are always a pale blue color. You, Yugi, have a spirit _strengthening_ charm, essentially the opposite of this charm. Where this one will shield the wearer's spirit, your charm will make your spirit stronger," walking over to him, she quietly added, "and it should also strengthen the spirit of your friend in the puzzle." In a normal speaking voice she finished describing the charm. "The kind of charm you have will always bee this pale green." Looking up she walked over to the table seeing as Kaiba had finished shuffling his deck during her explanation and was looking impatient.

"If you're ready, I'll begin," Lisa said. She quietly picked up the top four cards and placed them face down on the table. "You take good care of your cards, Mr. Kaiba. It will make reading them easier as it shows you already have a connection with them." Flipping over the first card on the far left she looked at the picture.

"The Mystical Genie of the Lamp. A surprising card for someone who doesn't believe in magic, but at the same time irrefutable proof that it is very much a part of your life." She then moved to the card next to it.

"The Genie's Lamp. I'm not surprised that this was the second card as the Genie is rarely seen without it. It represents your fervent denial of all things magical and your attempts to bottle them up, largely successful in your mind only, I'm afraid." She then moved to the third card, noting absently the surprise on the faces of Yugi and his friends and Mokuba as she accurately read Kaiba.

"Polymerization. I rarely see this card in my readings. The same way this card binds monster cards together, this shows that aspects of your life are coming together and merging, despite your dislike of this and attempts to keep everything separate." As she moved over to the last card she jerked her hand back as if burned.

"There's a strong connection between you and this card, it would seem. I usually only get clear connections after I reveal the card." Flipping the card, this time without difficulty, she finished her reading.

"The Blue Eyes White Dragon. One of the strongest cards and represents your own inner strength. But this card also shows devotion to the people you care about and your willingness to defend those select few with your entire being." Grabbing the top two cards from Kaiba's deck, despite her claims that she only needed four, she flipped them over revealing the other two Blue Eyes cards. "For you to have all three, particularly when drawn in responce to a reading, shows that you have all of the aspects of the Blue Eyes. Its strength, its courage, and its devotion. The reaction that I got from this card tells me that this is what is known as a 'Soul Connection.' This card will always be in your deck when you need it, and will always come to your aid without question."

Looking up, she quickly replaced the six cards and handed Kaiba his deck, waiting patiently for him to be satisfied that all of his cards were indeed there and that she hadn't damaged them before reclaiming her own cards.

She quickly walked towards the back of her tent and past the area sectioned off by the curtain. When she came back into view she was wearing a brown wig, presumably her next test and carrying a small box.

"As promised, a charm from the back. This is one of my stronger charms and very few people ever will be seen wearing it. This charm will make you more receptive to things you don't wish to accept. When you do come to accept them, you will be better able to cope with this acceptance and will also be a better conduit for the things you previously denied. In short, Kaiba, this charm will open your eyes. I am aware that you don't believe, but you will. And you'll need this charm."

Opening the box, she handed him a charm that actually looked like it had the colors of a prism instead of one specific color like the other charms she had. "I'm afraid I cannot explain this charm beyond this or mention it by name. But I promise that by week's end I will be able to explain everything." After a moment's hesitation where she looked like she was listening to someone the others couldn't hear, she shook her head and walked back to the curtain, asking them to wait for a moment.

"I wasn't going to give you these yet, but apparently the decision was made for me. With the exception of Mr. Kaiba, can you all exchange your pendants for these?" She held out pendants with the same colors as the ones they already had except for the fact that these seemed to glow much the way the one she gave to Kaiba did. After the others, with confused murmurs, had done so, Lisa shook her head as if to clear it completely and smiled apologetically.

"I'm sorry if my actions just now confused you. I'm sometimes a little disoriented after a reading. Do me a favor and don't lose those. Those are my good pendants and I would be sad to see them lost when you've not even had them for one day. And whatever you do, don't get rid of them or give them to someone who asks. Those pendants are my gift to you and if anyone else wants my good pendants and I think that he or she deserves it, that person will get it." After looking at their new pendants they saw that the colors were brighter and seemed to glow slightly.

As he was turning to leave 'this madhouse' with Mokuba, Kaiba saw for the briefest second as Lisa was bending down to grab something, the exact same pendant that Lisa had just given him, and for a moment he thought he saw a ghostly figure with purple hair, a golden dress, and six wings standing behind her.

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><p><em>AN: This is officially the longest introductory chapter I've ever written, and quite possibly my longest chapter ever. I do appologize to my reviewer (and any other reviewer or reader) who has black hair and blue eyes. I was unaware that this was not actually a thing that does happen naturally. For the sake of the story, please allow this universe to have different laws of naturally ocurring things that do not allow black hair and blue eyes to happen. Again, my appologies to anyone offended by this.<em>


	2. Plans

__Disclaimer: I own nothing.__

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><p>Throughout the weekend, Kaiba noticed more and more strange things. He assumed he was simply seeing things, but he kept seeing images for brief moments of things that weren't there. Usually they were simply blurs, but occasionally he could see them clearly enough that he could almost identify them.<p>

When it was time to go to school he, despite not actually believing that it would do anything, grabbed the pendant he was given and put it on, almost without even being aware of it. For a moment he thought about removing it, but decided that he might be able to return it. Lisa was about his age, meaning that she would be going to school with him.

Once he arrived in class he saw Lisa clearly. She didn't look much different from the tent minus her annoyance at having to wear the school uniform. He couldn't try and return the pendant though as she was completely surrounded by fools who actually bought into her 'psychic' act and were begging for her to do a reading for them.

"Do a reading for me!"

"No, don't read for her, read for me!"

"I actually have cards on me. Read for me!"

"No, me!"

"Me!"

"I can read for everyone, just not at the same time," Lisa said. "But unfortunately I don't have any cards on me except for my own, and I only allow people to touch them when I'm exchanging decks for reading purposes."

"Then the only one here you can do a reading on is me!" One boy said triumphantly, stepping forward and placing his deck in front of Lisa.

"Why can't you read like you're supposed to?" One girl complained.

"If you mean why don't I use crystal balls, tea leaves, or read palms, that's not where my gift lies," Lisa said. "I did have a couple of friends who's skills lay there, but my skills have always lay in cards speaking to me."

"You said that you could read off of normal cards, too. I have playing cards."

"I can read them, but it's more difficult. And with the cards that do speak to me in such close proximity, it will disturb my focus even further," Lisa explained apologetically.

"Hey, Lisa!" Joey's voice came through the noise of the crowd. "I was wondering if the readings you get from people can change."

"Sometimes," Lisa said. "But it's rare. I can do a reading for you after I've done readings for the people who were here first." Seeing that the deck had been shuffled and placed in front of her, Lisa grabbed the top four cards and placed them face down. Grabbing the one on the left, she flipped it over, though she looked slightly distracted as she did so.

"Reinforcements. It means that you defend those close to you and count on them to defend you in turn." Flipping over the card next to it, she shook her head and resumed her reading.

"Castle Walls. You keep everything personal close to you and dislike letting anyone in." She flipped over the next card, shaking her head as if to clear it.

"I'm sorry, can everyone with duel cards please back off? All of these cards in such close proximity is making it extremely hard to focus on any one card."

"You were fine in that tent, and there were more cards than there are now," someone protested.

"The other cards were far enough away that I couldn't hear them when I tapped into my abilities," Lisa explained.

"You weren't hearing anything a minute ago," a different student said.

"I wasn't doing a reading a minute ago. I can only hear cards, with the exception of my own, when I'm tapped into my psychic abilities. Now can everyone please back up? I'm getting a migraine." Once everyone had backed off she looked at the card she had revealed a moment ago.

"Divine Dragon Ragnarok," she paused, looking thoughtful. "One of my rare glimpses into the future. It wasn't clear, but you have a great purpose in your future. The same way that this card's element is light, you will be a light to someone." She flipped over the last card and smiled.

"The Sixth Samurai – Zanji. Alone it tells me little, but cards rarely speak to me by themselves but in tandem with the other cards of the reading. When read alongside the Divine Dragon, the Samurai tells me that, as a Samurai defended his leader with all of his power, you will guide and be a light and protector to someone in your future." Returning the boy's cards, she stood up and walked towards the door, looking slightly ill.

Kaiba thought of stopping her, but since Lisa looked ill he took his seat instead. He would find a time to return his—no _her_ pendant later.

As she was heading towards the door, Lisa stopped and looked at him, before shaking her head in resignation and, seeming to brace herself, walked over.

"I don't have to be psychic to tell that you're ticked at me," she said. "So tell me what it is now and you can stop making my headache worse that much sooner."

"I want to return this," he said simply.

"Sorry," Lisa said. "Ordinarily I allow returns on my pendants. But in the case of the ones I gave you and the others yesterday, it's necessary that you keep it." Seeing his annoyance, she tried a different tactic. "Look, humor me and keep it until the end of the week. If I haven't convinced you by then that you need to keep your pendant, I'll take it back and pay you for your troubles."

"Fine. But only to prove you wrong on everything. I'm not sure how you managed to tell all of that about me, but you've probably taken courses in psychology and were simply reading _me_."

After a moment's pause Lisa smiled.

"If I were making it all up, how could I know that you've been 'seeing things' as you've chalked it up to?"

"How do you know about that?" Kaiba demanded.

"I promise I'll explain everything at the end of the week," Lisa said. "Until then, bear with me and believe me when I tell you that you weren't imagining things."

"Prove it," Kaiba demanded.

"I can't truly prove anything yet, but this might help," she said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out her deck. Flipping over the top card, she put it in front of him. Kaiba instantly recognized it as the ghostly image he saw behind Lisa after she gave him the pendant.

"Wingweaver, my soul card," Lisa said quietly. "She told me that you saw her after the reading, and believe me I was shocked to hear it."

"Enough. This is some kind of trick, and I'm going to prove it," Kaiba said sharply. Lisa sighed and backed off.

"By the end of the week, everything will make a little more sense. I promise that much." After saying that she left to go to the restroom, hoping that she hadn't ruined everything.

_"Kaiba's awakening much faster than I anticipated. I knew the pendant would do this, but it was supposed to be _gradual_, by this day he was only just supposed to be seeing these things. I just wish I knew if this was a good thing or a bad one."_

As she walked into the restroom, she saw the mirror seem to warp. Sighing in annoyance, she walked over to it, waiting for the warping to finish. Instead of her own reflection, she saw a boy with similar features as her own.

"What do you want, Ray? Don't tell me you're still ticked that your kid sister has the psychic ability you wanted and you had to stay at the school."

"Yes, that still irks me, but that's not why I'm here," Ray said. "Anna saw something. She's not telling what, but all she's telling me is that the plan needs accelerating."

"I've already put all the pieces of your plan into play," Lisa said in annoyance. "But I can't accelerate them any more than I already have. Anna's just going to have to wait a week."

"That's not soon enough! We need all of the pieces on _your_ end in two days."

"Not possible. It only happens so quickly and all my charms can do is accelerate things slightly. Tell Anna to be patient. She'll have her pieces in play by the end of the week."

"Despite the fair, you only gave out a handful of the charms out."

"Yes, and I gave out more pendants than I wanted to because of Anna. So tell her to get off my case." Lisa turned away from the mirror, signifying the end of the conversation.

Looking down at her pendant she sighed.

"I hope I didn't make a mistake. I'm sorry, Kaiba."

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><p><em><em>AN: The cards Lisa flips in her readings are cards that I myself own. I just put a meaning to them that she might get from them.<em>_


	3. Fractured Awakening

___Disclaimer: I own nothing.___

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><p>Over the week, the talk of the school was both Lisa and her psychic abilities and the fact that every day Seto Kaiba looked more and more haggard.<p>

"I'm not kidding. The other day I said 'hi' to him and he jumped a foot."

"That's nothing. I asked him about his company and when the next duel disk would come out and he all but screamed at me to get away and not talk about the game."

"Weird. Wonder what's going on with him."

With every rumor Lisa heard she grew more and more concerned about the CEO. Then five days after she gave him the amulet, ironically one day after the time limit she was given to set things in motion, the unbelievable happened. Seto Kaiba, who was known for being perfect at everything, wasn't in school.

"Where's Rich Boy? I've never known him to miss a day of school," Joey asked.

"I don't know," Yugi said, concerned.

"You talking about Kaiba?" The boy Lisa did a reading for on her first day of school asked, walking over. "I heard that the stress of school, raising his brother, dueling, and running a company finally caught up to him and he snapped. Everyone says he's been seeing things and saying crazy stuff all week."

Happening to walk in just then, Lisa barely managed to contain a surprised and horrified yelp, and quickly spun out of the room and took off, not bothering to change her shoes on her way out. She ran as fast as she could until sense caught up to her and she hailed a cab.

When she arrived close to the Kaiba mansion she got out and ran as quickly as she could towards it, simply climbing the gate instead of waiting to be buzzed in. Pounding on the door, she let out a relieved breath when Mokuba answered it.

"Where's your brother? I need to talk to him now, it's an emergency."

"Seto's not feeling well and no one's allowed to see him," Mokuba said, starting to close the door when Lisa forced her way in.

"I need to talk to him _now_. I think I can help him," she demanded. Reluctantly, Mokuba told her which room was his, watching in surprise as Lisa started running even before he'd finished talking, pausing only long enough to remove her duel deck from her pocket.

_"If I'm right about what's wrong, having my deck won't do either of us any good. Watch this for me and don't touch it."_ Quickly running up the stairs, she quickly opened the door and barged in, not bothering with any etiquette and waiting to be allowed in.

"Get out," Kaiba yelled, looking and sounding as if he was in pain.

Lisa carefully walked towards him, as if approaching a wounded animal, remembering only as a slow afterthought to remove her shoes. Seeing something glint on a side table near the door, she looked over and saw the pendant she had given him almost a week ago.

_"_So that's why everything's going horribly wrong. He's not wearing the pendant."__

"Kaiba, listen to me, you-"

"No!" Kaiba yelled, cutting her off. "Get out. You'll just make everything worse. Every time someone comes near I see more things that shouldn't be there."

"Kaiba, listen to me. You're making the same mistake everyone makes when this happens and fighting this. The more you try and deny what you're seeing, the worse it will be for you. Now let me help you." Taking advantage of the fact that Kaiba, in an out of character move was curled up in a ball in the corner with his eyes closed and face covered, she quietly walked towards him, treading as if on thin ice.

_"_Walking on thin ice would be easier than this. The pendant accelerated the process that was already happening, but since he stopped wearing it, for whatever reason, he was left to his own devices on coping with it. If only he'd taken my advice and kept it on. We might not be in this position. It was supposed to make what's usually a rocky transition easier for his mind to bear. Especially when it's so closed off to everything that can't be quantified or isn't considered to be logical."__

"Stay back!" Kaiba screamed.

"Kaiba, you have to let me help you," Lisa said quietly. Taking a deep breath, she tapped into the psychic plane. For a brief moment the world spun out of focus, and when everything became clear again she saw both the room as it had been a moment ago and also the part of the psychic plane that was open to her, that of duel monsters. Her eyes locked onto the shape of a Blue Eyes White Dragon who, as she already knew it would be, was behind Kaiba, ever the concerned protector.

_"_Can he hear your voice?"__

_"_Yes, but every time I speak to him it makes things worse,"__ the Blue Eyes answered in an old, and almost gravelly voice.

_"_But will he listen?"__

_"_He might, but he rarely does. And it tends to make it worse for him. He usually screams at me to be silent."__

_"_How long has he been able to clearly see and speak to you?"___ Lisa asked._

_"_He could hear my voice on the third day of you giving him that trinket you hold. He could respond soon after."__ Lisa nodded in concern and, abandoning her previous idea of asking the dragon to vouch for her and try to convince Kaiba to listen, she continued walking forward, stopping an arm's length away and crouching down.

"Kaiba, I can help you. And I can explain everything, but I need you to calm down for a moment and put on the pendant I gave you. It will help." She doubted he would believe her, but she was mainly talking to give him something to focus on other than the pain of his currently fracturing mind. If she could distract him long enough, she might be able to slip the pendant at least on his person, if not around his neck.

"I said__GET OUT__!" Kaiba yelled, looking up and glaring at her. The second he did, Lisa's suspicions were confirmed. Whenever a psychic tapped into the psychic plane, there was a subtle physical sign. Depending on how deeply into the plane the psychic went, his or her eyes would change to a hazel shade and glow slightly, becoming closer to a whitish/silver in color and brightening the deeper the psychic went. To do a reading as she usually did only required sinking the first level into the plane, meaning the difference would be unnoticeable. To see the shadows of the monsters was a second plane skill, a plane that awakening psychics were usually at as they had no control over their gift. The change would be slightly more noticeable, but still something that most people would miss, aided by the fact that Kaiba's blue eyes would make the change even less noticeable. To hear the monsters speak was a third plane state. To be able to clearly see them was something that could only be done on the third plane, and to hear the monsters required the fourth plane. The fifth plane allowed you to respond. At the highest plane, the sixth, a psychic in the plane of duel monsters could tap into the powers of the card or monster he or she was bonded to, the 'soul card' she spoke of when she did a reading for Kaiba, and in some cases merge with it, and to a limited extent tap into the powers of other cards as long as there was some connection between psychic and card. Kaiba's eyes were almost completely silver, the same color she felt her own eyes were. The fifth plane.

_"_For him to be on the fifth plane almost constantly for three days, counting the day he reached this plane, is worrying. I hope I can save his mind from completely shattering,"__ Lisa thought in concern.

Acting quickly, reflexes heightened by being tapped into the psychic plane, she quickly threw her arm out and put Kaiba's pendant around his neck. In relief, she watched as, slowly, his eyes faded until he was just in the first plane.

_"_Good. I can read him while he's there,"__ Lisa thought. Despite the difficulty brought on by the distance from her deck, she called on a card in it, Psychic Kappa, and entered the sixth plane, an area of the psychic realm she rarely ventured into for it was the most dangerous. All of the cards in her deck called to her at once, offering her their power. The longer she was there, the greater the risk of her mind being overwhelmed. If it weren't for Wingweaver holding them back, she wouldn't even dare enter this plane.

Tapping into the Kappa's skills to enhance her own, she quickly scanned Kaiba, from the view of a psychic, a thing that was largely considered to be rude and not something she did lightly.

_"_Damaged but unbroken,"__ Lisa thought with a sigh of relief, thanking the Kappa and releasing their bond and slowly and carefully descending back into the first plane.

"Kaiba, I need you to humor me and imagine yourself being on an elevator. Currently you're on the second floor, but you need to be on the first floor. So I need you to imagine it going down one more floor, and then picturing yourself leaving the elevator entirely." She felt silly explaining it like that, but Kaiba was already drained from being on such a high plane for so long, even the first plane could be too much for him. And imagining an elevator was the easiest explanation for ascending and descending to and from the psychic planes until he was trained enough to go to the level he wanted at will. It was a trick she was taught and it did help.

She patiently watched as Kaiba's eyes completely returned to their normal blue, and watched as he shook with pain, exhaustion, and exertion.

"You promised me an explanation?" He demanded, immediately all buisness.

"In a few minutes, Kaiba," Lisa said. "At the moment you're in no shape to do anything. I know what will help, wait here." She quickly walked down stairs and, after grabbing her deck, found her way to the kitchen.

"Mokuba, good. I managed to help your brother for the most part, but I could use your help in finding a few things I need to help him completely." She quickly listed the things she needed and, after Mokuba hurriedly showed her where everything was and gave her permission to use whatever she needed before rushing to his brother, started making something that was made for her when her psychic abilities awoke and again the first time she lost control and her mind nearly fractured.

Once it was done she headed upstairs and this time knocked on the door, assuming the short-tempered 'What?' was her permission to enter.

"Camomile tea, a sandwich, I could only find turkey, I'm afraid, Excedrin for your headache, and chocolate because it tastes good," she said, putting a plate of food in front of Kaiba and waiting for him to finish eating it. This also bought her time to explain everything to him in a way he'd understand and, hopefully, accept.

Once Kaiba had finished eating he looked at her expectantly and with more than a little impatience. Mokuba stood up to leave, but Lisa shook her head to tell him he could stay. Taking a deep and steadying breath, she said one simple thing.

"Cancel any plans you had for the day, Kaiba. Because we'll be here for a while."

* * *

><p><em><em>AN: I'm using the American version of Yu-Gi-Oh (AKA, the dubbed anime), but I'm including some elements from the manga and actual Japan, hence the mention of the shoes. Most of you probably know this already, but in Japan there are indoor shoes and outdoor shoes, and it's considered rude to wear your shoes inside someone's house<em>__._


	4. Explanations

___Disclaimer: I own nothing.___

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><em><em>

Lisa waited a few minutes while Kaiba took care of a few company things. To relax as well as focus her mind so that she could best explain what was happening, she took her deck and repeatedly cut, shuffled, and placed the top four cards face down, flipping them over one by one as if she was doing a reading on herself.

"Practicing your hoax for when you open your shop?" Kaiba asked suddenly, causing Lisa to jump in surprise.

"It's not a hoax, and I find it meditative," Lisa said calmly, continuing to cut and shuffle her deck.

"That's enough. You owe me an explanation and I want it now," Kaiba said shortly. Lisa sighed and put her deck to the side.

She quickly walked over to a side table and grabbed Kaiba's deck, walking over and placing it in front of him.

"Cut and shuffle. I'll explain then." Waiting for Kaiba to cut and shuffle his deck, she took one steadying breath and, seeing the deck placed in front of her, placed the first four cards face down. Flipping them over, she revealed the same four cards as last time. Seeing a skeptical look on his face, she smirked in vague amusement.

"If you think it's coincidence, you're welcome to reshuffle," she said.

"You're stalling and I'm sick of it," Kaiba snapped.

"Very well. First I have to admit that I wasn't wholly honest in my reading," Lisa said. Before Kaiba could interrupt, she quickly continued speaking. "It wasn't so much that I lied in my reading as it was that I left something out. The Mystical Genie does indicate that magic is a part of your life. However it also indicates a potential for magic yourself."

"And why didn't you say this when you were reading my brother?" Mokuba asked.

"If you tell a skeptic that he has a strong potential for supernatural abilities, not only will you not be believed, but when and if those supernatural abilities unlock you'll have almost no chance of getting close enough to help. This was proven by the next card being the Genie's Lamp. He's trying so hard to force all forms of magic away from his life that if I had said that the amulet was anything more than a fancy trinket he'd have made certain that I couldn't get within five feet of him."

"This is ridiculous. Some sort scam to make me believe in this. Not a word of this is true," Kaiba said.

"Fine. Then take the amulet off and spiral right back into the insanity that I found you in," Lisa said, her patience with this stubborn pig-headed fool long since spent. "If you're so certain that this is all a hoax, then there won't be any problem. But considering that when I walked in you were roughly a day away from your mind completely fracturing, I__highly__ doubt that I'm lying to you."

"What did you do to my brother? This all started after we met you," Mokuba demanded. To her credit, Lisa looked away in shame at the accurate accusation.

"Nothing that wouldn't have happened eventually," she said quietly. "The pendant unlocked his own psychic abilities. But it wouldn't have unlocked anything if they weren't already both present and on the verge of unlocking on their own. I just... accelerated the process." She looked back at Kaiba, an accusation in her eyes and the apology and shame gone.

"However the pendant was also going to make the process gradual and allow his mind to accept it a little more easily than he would have normally. If he'd kept the pendant on like I told him to do, this wouldn't have happened. Instead he had to be an idiot and left the pendant on the desk where it did absolutely no good."

"So what exactly happened?" Mokuba asked. Lisa paused and tried to think of the best way to explain it.

"He made the mistake every awakening psychic makes," she finally said. "He fought what was happening and the contradiction of logic and reason which said that what was happening was impossible and the fact that it was happening despite the impossibility..." she hesitated again.

"What happened is what we call a 'fracture,'" she started again. "Basically your mind has mental safeguards put in place that allow us to handle everything we go through and not completely lose our sanity. The more stressful a situation, the more strain is put on the safeguards.

"What happened with Kaiba is the contradiction of the impossible happening all around him put too much strain on his safeguards and they broke. While this is a bad thing to happen, it's not as serious as it sounds. The safeguards are put in place to lessen the strain, but your mind can handle a decent amount of strain on its own. But after a certain point your mind starts to break. This leads to insanity. The pendant takes some of the work off of your safeguards and in the case of a fractured mind repairs the damage done, though the the repairs are slow." Seeing that they were still confused, she thought of a different way to phrase it.

"Think of it like a pressure cooker. The insanity that is brought on by the contradiction is what happens if the pressure isn't released. In the case of a pressure cooker, when enough pressure builds up, it would explode. The pendant is basically the valve that lets out steam. It allows an awakening psychic to function."

"How?" Mokuba asked. Despite still being slightly confused, he did notice that after his brother had the pendant on him he was calmer and more rational.

"It's something of an on/off switch. In time he'll be able to tap into the psychic planes at will and won't need the pendant. But at the moment it will keep him from being bombarded by the psychic planes. After he's learned control, it will then help keep the strain off his mind in the higher planes."

"Planes?" This time the question was asked by Kaiba instead of his little brother. Lisa inwardly smiled in satisfaction. Despite his skepticism, he was slowly believing what was happening.

"There are numerous psychic realms, Kaiba. And in each of those realms there are different planes that can be accessed. The higher the plane, the stronger the psychic energy being used. It's similar to the different stars on duel monster cards.

"Psychics in our realm, that of the cards, have six planes we can access. The plane that I am on when I do my readings is the first one. In that one you can understand the cards based on the energies they give in relation to their owner. That's why I have the card's owners cut and shuffle their decks first. Doing psychic readings is a combination of listening to the cards and understanding the readings that are given off by their owners. A thing that comes with practice.

"In the second plane you can see the shadows of duel monsters. Usually when a psychic is first awakening they're indistinguishable blurs, but there is the occasional clear image. However clear, it will never seem more than a ghostly form.

"In the third pane the ghostly forms of the cards solidify. Now instead of a ghostly illusion, they're more like the holograms duelists have become accustomed to seeing during a duel.

"In the fourth plane you can hear the voices of the cards. Meaning those voices you've been hearing are real, if that makes you feel better. Responding to these voices is something that you can do once you've entered the fifth plane." She hesitated and tried to think of the best way to impress this upon Kaiba.

"The sixth plane is the highest one, meaning it's the most powerful. It's also the most dangerous. Many awakening psychics get over-confident in their skills have tried to enter the sixth plane and have been unable to leave it. In the sixth plane, particularly of our realm, everything is more powerful. Every card that you have any kind of connection to will speak to you and offer you their powers. To a limited extent you can merge with them. However this is hard to control, even for psychics who have been using their skills for years. If even one card tries to merge with you and you cannot disconnect from it you'll be unable to leave the psychic plane. Even with the help of the amulet, your mind can only stand the sixth plane for so long. Your mind will completely fracture. At best you'll end up in a mental facility. At worst you'll die, either from suicide because you're unable to withstand the psychic energies on top of the powers of the cards or because you were unable to function and you die from dehydration.

"I'm warning you, Kaiba. Do not try to enter the sixth plane until you have a solid grasp over your abilities. With your mind the way it is now you wouldn't last a moment there. And even after you've recovered, the chances of you being able to withstand it alone. I don't care if you believe me about anything else I've said. Stay out of the sixth plane. Your mind will need at least a month to recover. As it stands now, you couldn't handle much more than the first plane."

_"_That's not good enough!"__ Lisa, Mokuba, and Kaiba all jumped at the sudden shout from an unknown source.

"As if things weren't delicate enough already," Lisa growled, standing up and walking to the mirror.

"Ray, you and Anna have better have a__really__ good reason for interrupting me when he barely tolerates what I'm saying now," she said angrily, focusing on the mirror to allow Ray's connection to form more strongly.

As Kaiba and Mokuba watched, the reflection started to warp and Ray's image appeared. Beside him was another girl about his age. She had dark brown hair, green eyes, and pierced ears.

"What's going on, Lisa, is that you failed. Your job was to have a fully awakened psychic by the time I contacted you. Instead you have this infant who can't go beyond the first plane? What went wrong? I want an explanation, and I want it now."

"You know full-well that a fully awakened psychic is impossible in under a month. And even that is pushing it. And now that you've intruded, I wouldn't be surprised if you set this back even further." She glared at the mirror and snapped her fingers and the image disappeared. She sighed and turned around.

"Sorry about that. My brother is able to speak to people he has a connection with through mirrors. Usually people of his skill have to form that connection through work, but due to our being blood, the connection is automatically there. It also means that when I get ticked off I can tap into the first plane of his skill and end any communications and he can tap into the first plane of the cards and see their shadows."

"What was all that about?" Mokuba asked. Lisa sighed.

"I was hoping to address that on our own time, but Anna forced my hand. There's a reason I sought out anyone with the potential to be a psychic and accelerated the awakening." She looked directly at Kaiba, expression slightly pleading. "Anna has the gift of foresight. I don't know what she saw, but we need your help."


	5. School

__Disclaimer: I own nothing.__

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><p>After Lisa had calmed down from her irritation at Ray and Anna and her concern at knowing that something was wrong and not knowing what it is, she sat down and, almost unconsciously, started shuffling and reshuffling her deck.<p>

"Would you mind telling me what's going on?" Kaiba asked after he had recovered from the initial shock at what had happened.

"Right. I was still explaining things, wasn't I?" Lisa asked rhetorically, looking up for a moment.

"Kaiba, you may be fine for the moment, but in a few minutes this is all going to come crashing down on you and if you're not__sitting__ down, you are going to__fall__ down," she said, returning to her cards.

"I'm still not convinced this isn't all a hoax," Kaiba said shortly.

"Fine. I'll prove it to you," Lisa said simply, standing up and walking in front of Kaiba. "I wasn't going to do this considering the state of your mind, but you leave me no choice. Mokuba, can I borrow the charm I gave you?" Once he had given the protection charm to her, she handed it to Kaiba. As an afterthought, she walked over to her bag and pulled out two charms. One was a spirit strengthening charm, and the other he had never seen before. Unlike the other charms that were all light in color, this one had the color of obsidian.

"This one is a ward. It will work with the spirit protection amulet to help protect you from any dangers that might come your way. This place is somewhat unpredictable. The spirit strengthening charm will help you cope and might make everything easier for you to handle. We'll have to do this quickly since I don't want your mind to fracture further." She reached into her bag and pulled out another ward. "Put those on or I won't attempt to prove everything to you," she said simply, putting on the second ward.

Kaiba reluctantly put on the pendants.

"Mokuba, we're going to need more food and tea. I hate to ask, but do you think you could bring the pot that I made up?" Mokuba quickly left and returned a moment later.

"Thanks. Now that you're back, I can do this." She grabbed Kaiba's wrist with a quick explanation that physical contact was needed the first time, and instructions to relax and not focus on anything. She closed her eyes and took several slow, deep breaths. Unlike when she entered the psychic planes and had a feeling of floating, this time the room felt as if it was spinning around her. The almost unnoticeable stumble next to her told her that Kaiba felt it as well.

"A few more seconds and it will stop," she said quietly, absently noticing her voice echo around her. As she promised, the feeling of everything spinning around her passed and she released Kaiba.

"Where are we?" Kaiba asked. Instead of his room, he was in a room that was extremely large and empty.

"I told you about the planes that we can access as psychics. This is a plane that all psychics can access. It's a psychic reflection of an actual place. We're not actually here. Physically our bodies are in your room. But our minds aren't there." Remembering that Kaiba was still a skeptic and also didn't know anything about this, she thought of a metaphor that she could use for the moment. "Think of it like a hologram that Mokuba can't see.

"Just keep in mind that just because we're not physically here, doesn't mean that any dangers we come across aren't real. Not all psychic powers are as... pacifist as ours. There are real psychics that can actually shoot fireballs and this is their favorite place to be. Speaking of, duck." As she spoke, she ducked down, pulling Kaiba down with her as one of the fireballs she mentioned flew above their heads.

"Lisa, don't you know better than to bring babies here," a boy asked, walking over as he manifested another fireball.

"Aaron, don't you know better than to act like a two year-old," Lisa replied, standing up. "Or do I have to talk to Brad again?"

"Who are you calling an infant?" Kaiba demanded, glaring at Aaron.

"You, infant," Aaron answered easily.

"It's a rude term sometimes applied to newly-awakened psychics," Lisa explained.

"Well if you felt the need to duck, you've obviously lost your touch with your little charms," Aaron said. "And since this is the fire-masters time, you're on our turf. You card-speakers are always so full of yourself. Two less will do us a favor."

"One time a decade ago with __one__ card-speaker proving himself better, and you hold it against us for the rest of eternity," Lisa muttered.

"Well now you're on our turf," Aaron said.

"In case you haven't noticed, we're the only ones here," Kaiba said.

"I'm the most powerful fire-master," Aaron said.

"Did I mention it was his cousin who was shown up a decade ago?" Lisa asked. "He holds a huge amount of hatred for card-readers. Just don't move and you'll be fine."

"We'll see," Aaron snapped, throwing two fireballs. Lisa's wards erected a shield that stopped the fireballs in place.

"My charms are just fine, thank you." The sound of a bell ringing stopped the feud. With one last glare, Aaron vanished.

"I'm sorry, Kaiba," Lisa sighed. "Time moves differently here. I thought I'd timed this better. On the bright side, we didn't end up in the middle of a duel. Not even the strongest charms can stop those."

"Now can you tell me what this place is?" Kaiba asked shortly.

"Wasn't the bell obvious? We're at school. This is a place for psychics to safely learn to control their gifts. Well, the physical one is. This is a... playground of sorts. Psychics can goof off here and relax. It's also a meeting ground for when some psychics can't physically be present at the school. It's an exact replication of the physical school in the one psychic plane every psychic can access." She started walking and at one door stopped and opened it.

"If you need more proof of this being a school, look inside here. Class is in session. To a lesser extent, things that happen in the physical school are reflected in this one. If I had known that I timed it incorrectly I wouldn't have chosen the main hall as our entrance. It was supposed to be empty. Walk with me and I'll give you a tour."

"Weren't you the one saying we had to be quick?"

"Time moves differently here, Kaiba. And if I thought your mind could handle it I'd give you the accelerated tour, but instead we get a walking one." For the next several minutes she showed Kaiba the main things of the school.

"Now for the room I wanted to show you. If this does not prove what I've been saying is true, then nothing will." She walked inside and stopped in front of a mirror.

"Psychics with my brother's skills made this one mirror one that any psychic can look through as a portal." She focused on the mirror and it started to warp under her command, refocusing on Kaiba's room. In it was a concerned Mokuba and Lisa and Kaiba standing as if in a trance.

"Since this is only a__reflection__ of the school, we can only look. Were we at the real school we could talk as well, but this isn't what I wanted to show you." She walked towards another door that looked like a closet.

"Stay close, Kaiba. I only want to be here for a few moments, this is dangerous enough as is." A quick glance at Kaiba told her that she needed to make this as brief as possible. The CEO was looking ill and she was worried that he would faint if she kept him here much longer. Since no one had ever fainted in the psychic school before, at least not in the manifestation of it, she wasn't certain what would happen and didn't want to find out.

She opened the door and took only a couple steps inside, making sure to leave it open behind her. The door had an annoying tendency to change locations when she closed it and since she didn't want to spend very long here she couldn't afford for that to happen.

"Welcome to the safest glimpse of the sixth plane you'll ever get, Kaiba." In front of them was every duel monster to exist, and even manifestations of the spell and trap cards.

"This is-" Kaiba broke off mid-sentence and reflexively grabbed the door-frame as the floor he was standing on seemed to be pulled from underneath him.

"Time to leave," Lisa said, grabbing his wrist again.

"Focus on your physical body and the trip back will be easier," she said, closing her eyes and again taking slow, deep breaths. After a few moments she opened her eyes and saw Kaiba's room. She looked at the CEO and saw him collapse onto his bed, trembling despite himself.

"And this is why I asked Mokuba to grab the food," she said, again putting a plate in front of him and sitting down, the strain of entering and exiting the psychic realm this many times in a day starting to show. "Eat slowly and sip the tea and you'll feel better."

"Are_ you_ okay?" Mokuba asked.

"He's fine, Mokuba. The first trip is always rough." She quickly entered the sixth plane and merged again with Psychic Kappa, breathing a sigh of relief when she saw that the gamble she took didn't leave Kaiba any worse off than he already was.

"Now that I'm convinced that Kaiba's all right, and he'll stay that way as long as he keeps the amulet on, I'll be going," she said, standing up before promptly collapsing again.

"Are you all right, Lisa?" Mokuba asked.

"I'm fine," Lisa said. "I stood up too quickly is all." She stood up again, more slowly the second time, and grabbed her bag, slinging it over her shoulder.

"I'll be going now and if Kaiba decides he believes me and wants my help in learning to control everything, he's more than welcome to find me at my store. It's opening in a few days and I want to use as much of the holiday that's starting tomorrow to prepare as I can."

"You can't leave now. It's dark outside," Mokuba protested. "Besides, you helped my brother, so now we owe you. The least we can do is let you stay the night."

"I appreciate the offer, Mokuba, but I'm a quick study of towns. I can find my house and I have enough money for a cab if I need one. Kaiba, if you decide you believe me, drop by my store and I'll finish the interrupted explanation and answer whatever questions you may have. And whatever you do keep your amulet on. My getting here in time was pure luck." After a moment's thought, she added "Mokuba, I need you to make sure your brother keeps the amulet on. I have a feeling he'll listen to you sooner than he'll listen to me." That said, she left.

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><p><em><em>AN: I'm not sure how I feel about this chapter, but it will do for now. If something doesn't make sense, let me know and I'll explain what I can in a review reply or edit it in the story itself to make it clearer.<em>_


	6. The Card's Warning

__AN: This probably isn't necessary, but I feel a need to have a small disclaimer about what I'm writing about. I do not actually believe in psychic abilities or the paranormal. I just find it interesting to think about and enjoy suspending my disbelief long enough to write something about it despite my own disbelief. If anyone does believe in anything I write about and is offended by my portrayal of it, I apologize, but I am not writing this to promote any belief in the subject at hand.__

__Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Just a reminder, the small bit about the psychic school was the basic idea from the anime and manga 'Psychic Academy' but this is in no way a crossover fic between the two stories___._

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><p>The next day, Lisa entered her soon to be open shop early and sat down with clear rectangular prisms that looked to be made of crystal in several boxes in front of her. Pulling out one of them she placed it on a wooden cutting board and grabbed a long, thin, sharp knife that almost looked like a giant needle and started carefully and painstakingly drilling a hole at the top. Once she had drilled a hole the entire way through, she reached over to the ball of twine next to the boxes and cut a length off with a switchblade. She then strung the prism and reached into a smaller box that had bead-shaped crystals. Placing one of the beads on either side of the crystal, she then tied off the twine tightly and cut off the excess twine. As she started focusing on the nearly completed amulet she happened to see the mirror in front of her start to warp.<p>

Sighing, she walked over to it and waited for the reflection to settle.

"We noticed that you brought Kaiba to the school," Ray said without anything in the way of greeting. "Does this mean he's awakened?"

"You realize you're asking the impossible, right?" Lisa asked irritably. "Out of all the people it could have been to be a psychic on the verge of awakening, it had to be the biggest skeptic I've ever met. I'm going to have a hard enough time simply convincing him, forget actually teaching. I'm hoping that the belief I think I saw in his brother will work in my favor and Kaiba will come to humor him. Mokuba may not understand everything, but he did see that what I did yesterday helped his brother calm down and become the rational person he's known for being."

"How soon?"

"If I get __extremely__ lucky I can have him able to at least enter the sixth plane in a month, but that would be pushing it. Remember, his mind nearly fractured and needs at least a few days to heal. If I weren't pressed for time I'd wait a month before even trying to teach him anything, but in this case I'll have to trust in my charms and his own strength," Lisa answered after a moment's thought. "So what's the unreasonable time Anna's giving me?"

"Can you do it in three weeks?" Anna asked, walking next to Ray. Lisa hesitated for a long moment in thought before slowly nodding.

"It would be pushing it, but assuming that everything happens the way I need it to and he's as fast a learner as I suspect, I think I can do it in three weeks. I can't do anything for at least two days, though."

"Right. The grace period," Ray said.

"His mind's in bad enough shape and I've already broken about a dozen different rules of etiquette along with almost completely fracturing him. I'm not going against the grace period. It's the closest thing he has to recovery," Lisa said when she saw that Anna was about to protest. That said, she started turning away to walk back to the table when she stopped and turned around.

"By the way, if you interrupt me when I'm making my charms again I'll break every mirror here and then I'll kill you." She then broke off the connection and walked to the table, sitting down in front of the crystal. She took several slow, steady breaths, feeling the familiar tingle in her skin, mainly in her hands as she attuned herself to the psychic plane.

_"_Note to self: teach Kaiba about secondary skills as soon as possible,"__ she thought before slowly pushing the psychic energy collected in her hands into the prism as well as the two beads. Once she finished she opened her eyes and then carefully studied the spirit strengthening charm she had made, reading the energies of it. She let out an annoyed growl when the energies coming off of the charm told her that it was pretty to look at, but as far as its properties went, the charm was a dud.

"Perfectly good waste of energy," she said in annoyance before letting out a sigh. "Maybe I can use it as decoration for the shop. I doubt most people even believe these charms do anything anyhow, a few duds won't hurt my store."

She pulled out another crystal and had just started drilling a hole when there was a knock at her door, which startled her enough to make her jump. This caused the blade to slip and slice into her palm. Quickly making sure her blood didn't get onto the crystal, she wrapped it until she could properly take care of it. Irritated at this, she walked over to the door and opened it quickly. Whatever she was about to say, however, died on her tongue when she saw that the people on the other side of her door were none other than the Kaiba brothers.

"The brothers Kaiba," she said with a grin. "Didn't expect to see you here."

"I'm only here because you've somehow convinced Mokuba that you're not a fraud. I intend to prove that you are."

"Fine, in the meantime I get to try and prove that I'm not," Lisa said with a shrug, unwrapping her hand and looking at the wound. It was long, but not deep. Ordinarily she would have let it go, but decided that this could work in her favor.

She quickly went into the sixth plane and sought out and then found a magic card called Rain of Mercy. Merging with it slightly, she looked as it went to work and rained on her hand. As Kaiba and Mokuba watched, the wound healed itself and she left the psychic plane.

"You're more than welcome to look for anything technological that could give that illusion, Mr. Kaiba," she said. "In the meantime you interrupted me as I was doing something important, so I'll ask you to look around quietly."

As Kaiba studied the room, Mokuba quietly sat down and watched Lisa work.

"What are you doing?"

"Well, as I said I make my pendants by hand," Lisa explained, not looking up from the crystal as she carefully drilled into it. "The back room has all of the important things," She added, nodding over to the door in question. "You're free to look, but don't touch anything. Some of the things back there are dangerous and as I can barely afford to open my shop, I definitely can't afford a lawsuit." As she spoke, she strung the prism and beaded crystals up and tied it off before focusing intently.

As Mokuba and Kaiba watched, the crystals all began to glow a lilac color, getting steadily brighter until it was almost at the point that they had to shield their eyes. Slowly the glow died down and when they looked what were once clear crystals were now a light lilac color. Lisa held it in her hands for a moment and smiled.

"Great. This one's not a dud like the last one." She then looked up at Kaiba and Mokuba. "Would you like a brief tour? It's not overly interesting, but it might be informative. Or it could bore you to death. One or the other." She stood up and opened the door that she had indicated to Mokuba earlier.

This room looked to be about the size of the front room that Kaiba and Mokuba came in through. One half of the room was filled with tables with boxes that had artificial lights over them and tubes and bottles that looked to contain chemicals. The other half of the room contained a large stone wheel connected to what looked similar to a sewing machine pedal.

"This is the only non-supernatural thing that I do in my store," Lisa said. "I grow my own crystals back here, though the exact process I use is my own secret. Do me a favor and stay away from the tables. I don't want something to spill on anyone by accident." She walked over to a box and looked in it, seeing the crystals were fully-grown, she picked the box up and set it on a table next to the wheel.

"I use this to smooth the crystals. This is one of the more dangerous steps," she said. "There's probably an easier, not to mention safer, way to do this, but I prefer this method." She carefully grabbed a prism-shaped crystal and placed it very gently against the wheel and very slowly pressed down on the pedal after placing on goggles and a thin pair of gloves gloves. After a few somewhat tense moments she turned the crystal and placed a different side of it against the wheel before repeating the process several times.

"Now for the scary one," Lisa muttered, grabbing a circular crystal. Carefully holding the crystal, she pressed down on the pedal. After several long moments she finished two circular crystals and placed them in two empty boxes on a table that was near the door.

"Like I told your brother, Kaiba, this room has dangerous things in it. You two are welcome to spend as much time as you like here. Especially since this store doubles as my home if you saw the door out front, but if this door is closed and you know for a fact that I'm in there, do not disturb me. I make one mistake with my crystals and I'm in trouble."

"And just what would you have here that would interest either of us?" Kaiba asked.

"I'm a psychic, not a savage," Lisa answered, walking to the door that led to her living area and unlocking it.

"Right. Your garden will definitely bring me here daily," Kaiba said sarcastically.

"I'm allowed a hobby, Mr. Kaiba," Lisa said. "Follow me. There's exactly one room without a mirror in it and I don't want to be interrupted again." To humor her brother, she agreed to have several mirrors in her house and at least one in her store, but the need for privacy led her to have a room in her house without one. While not as large as the Kaiba's house, it was still large.

"If you could barely afford your store, how do you have enough money for this house?" Kaiba asked.

"Ray's and my parents travel a lot on business. They don't have much to do with us, but they still provide us with a decent amount of money every month as well as... collection items, so to speak." She opened a door and revealed shelves upon shelves of books, several of them rare and all of them well-read.

"This is my sanctuary. I don't like to be interrupted when I'm reading so there aren't any mirrors in this room." She walked over to a dresser and opened a drawer, pulling out a box and opening it, removing two keys.

"I know that the chances are slim, but if for some reason you two decide to come here, this will let you into the store and my house." To her surprise, both of them took a key and placed it in a pocket.

"I believe you still owe me an explanation," Kaiba said.

"Always to the point," Lisa muttered, indicating that they should take a seat. "Ask whatever you like, and I'll answer them to the best of my ability."

"How exactly did you awaken these alleged psychic powers? And why did you choose me to do so?"

"As for how I did it, it's simple," Lisa said, taking off her pendant. "In order to change my crystals from the clear color you saw earlier to the colors they are sold at, I infuse them with psychic energy. The one that I gave you is the one that only psychics wear. It unlocks the ability in a person and then helps control it. It also helps the awakening be easier to bear as I've said. Why I chose you..." she hesitated for a moment before continuing, "I didn't. This pendant doesn't do anything for someone who doesn't already have that ability. It also doesn't awaken a psychic that isn't already on the verge of awakening already. Don't blame me for your abilities, blame your cards. They were the ones who told me. The Genie told me that you had the potential. The lamp told me that you were suppressing this potential. Polymerization told me that your normal life and the supernatural one you refuse to acknowledge were fusing, which means that you were on the verge of awakening. And the Blue Eyes White Dragon told me that you had the physical and mental strength to handle it."

"Why were you the one sent here?" Mokuba asked. "Were you the best in your school or something?"

"Actually I was fairly average. There are several card-speakers and several more who's amulet making is a primary ability and not a second one. Don't ask, I'll explain in a minute. The reason I was chosen to come here is because I was qualified in a different way. Anna said that she saw a fractured awakening when she said that there was a need for a psychic to be awoken. Before I met Kaiba, I didn't think it was possible for someone's awakening to be more fractured than my own. As a result I'm usually picked to awaken psychics that we either suspect or know will fracture."

"What causes a fracture?" Mokuba asked.

"I was going to explain primary and secondary abilities next, but since you asked about fractures, I'll explain that instead. Like I said yesterday, a fracture happens when an awakening psychic rejects the things he or she sees and hears. Everyone does so simply because of how impossible it seems at first. So they'll cling to logic, and reason and essentially hope that if they ignore it long enough it will go away. This puts stress on the minds mental safeguards, which causes them to break eventually. If the psychic doesn't either start excepting this or gets help by way of a charm, the mind itself will start to break under the impossibility of what's happening. How bad a fracture is depends both on how hard the person is fighting and how long before he or she gets help.

"Now before you ask about primary and secondary abilities, let me explain. Every psychic has a thing that comes naturally to him or her and, after he or she has been trained in it, requires almost no effort to tap into. That is the primary ability. There is also another ability that, while it takes more effort to tap into is also a fairly natural thing. This would be the secondary ability. In general psychics will address their skills in order of primary ability and secondary. For example my primary skill is that of a card-speaker, and secondarily I'm a charm maker. So I would call myself a card-speaking charm maker. My brother is a mirror-gazing pyro. And so on. The secondary ability usually is one that has to be found through practice, though sometimes it can be sensed."

"Why haven't you tried again to make me use these alleged powers?" Kaiba asked, disbelief evident in his town.

"Grace period," Lisa said simply. "When a mind nearly fractures or goes through a lot of stress as yours did, there is a two day grace period to allow the mind to recover."

"One last thing. I have proof that you're a fraud," Kaiba said. "Your pendant that you claimed would keep me from seeing and hearing the illusions you somehow planted in my mind didn't work."

"What?" Lisa asked, genuine shock and surprise in her face and voice. "That's not possible. I may only be a secondary charm maker, but I'm good at it. That pendant should be working." She quickly cleared a space on the table and shuffled her deck quickly as she entered the first plane. Cutting the cards, she placed the first four on the table and flipped them over one by one.

"All of them magic cards," she said quietly, regathering the cards and repeating the process several more times. Each time the result was the same. The first four cards were always magic cards.

"Kaiba, I need to see your deck," she said urgently. "Mokuba, I need you to go into my store and go into the room you two first found me in. That's where I keep my cards for people without decks. I need you to make as many fourty card decks as you can. It doesn't matter what the cards are. Just make sure they have a balance of monster, magic, and trap cards."

Perhaps it was the urgency in her voice that did it, but the two siblings wordlessly did as she asked, Kaiba cutting and shuffling his deck and handing it to her without question, though he wondered why after he had done so.

Flipping over the first four cards, she again had four magic cards. "Again," she said, handing his deck to him as she shuffled her own. She barely noticed twenty minutes later when Mokuba came in with two dozen forty card decks, only pausing long enough to ask them to cut, shuffle, and hand them to her. After each deck had been cut, shuffled, and read twenty times, each time being cut and shuffled in a different way as before, Lisa sat back with a worried expression.

"If my math is right, we cut and shuffled decks 520 times. Ten for mine and Kaiba's decks, and twenty for the ones Mokuba brought in. Every time the result has been four magic cards. I've done many readings since I came to my abilities, but __never__ have I had results of the same types of card more than maybe four times in a row. Kaiba, you can think I'm a fraud all you like. You saw me flip the top four cards of each deck, and most of the decks you and your brother shuffled yourselves. You cannot claim that I rigged those decks to have all magic cards. Especially since the majority of them your brother put together."

"What does it mean?" Mokuba asked, seeing that Lisa looked worried and almost frightened.

"It means that I might have to go against the grace period," Lisa said. "The psychic plane is represented in magic cards when do readings. For every result to be four magic cards, it can only mean one thing. The cards are telling me that the veil between the psychic realm and this one is weakening. It's very possible that this will be Dartz all over again."

"What do you mean?" Mokuba and Kaiba asked at the same time.

"I mean that the cards are coming to life. And unless we can repair the veil, people could die."

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><p><em><em>AN: It took me six chapters, but I'm finally getting to the actual plot of the story.<em>_


	7. True Awakening

__AN: Um... Hi, guys. I'm back. Sorry for the hiatus. Had almost no inspiration to write this. I'll try and give you quick updates to make up for it, but no promises.__

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><p>After a few moments of quiet, Lisa looked at Kaiba.<p>

"To address your claim that my pendant didn't work, that's your fault, not mine," she said levelly. "_You_ were the one that chose not to wear the amulet. I _told_ you not to take it off for the week. Your fracture and near-insanity is _your_ fault. Not mine. If you keep wearing it, it should keep you from slipping into the psychic planes without willing it, and if you do for some reason slip there, you won't go past the second plane. Essentially, you'll be able to function as long as you _keep it on_."

For a moment, Kaiba looked as if he was about to respond, but he remained quiet, knowing that it was the truth. She had told him to keep the amulet on and he, believing that she was either a fraud or delusional, chose to ignore her.

After a few moments where Lisa appeared to be thinking, she let out a resigned sigh.

"I'm afraid that I'll have to go against the grace period on this. We don't have the time to wait two days. So long as it's mild psychic things, my amulet should be able to keep you from being damaged. Well, damaged further."

Wanting to make sure that, yes, it was safe to do at least a couple things, she slipped quietly into the sixth plane—Kaiba looking surprised to see her eyes change from their normal near-black to silver—and fused with Psychic Kappa, looking steadily and carefully at the young CEO. When she left the sixth plane, she let out a small nod.

"You'll be fine so long as we stick to the first plane, though I doubt we'll get even that far, considering how stubborn you are. Mokuba, you're welcome to stay, but you need to be quiet. Make yourself comfortable, Mr. Kaiba. This could take a while."

"I'll stand, thanks," Kaiba said, refusing to be bossed around by her for the second time in one day.

"Trust me, you want to sit down."

"Come on, Seto, she's trying to help you. Please just do what she asks?" Mokuba quietly pleaded with his older brother.

"All right, Mokuba, but only because you asked," Kaiba said, sitting down while Lisa mouthed a 'Thank you' to Mokuba.

"Thank you," Lisa said, looking at Kaiba. She then lapsed into silence, trying to figure out how to explain this. She was good at helping awakening psychics recover from a fracture. She had never tried teaching anything before.

"Have you ever meditated before?" Many of the first lessons were brought about through meditation, so that seemed like a good place to start. The look Kaiba gave her was a resounding 'no' however, so that made things tricky.

"All right, we'll start with that, then. Meditation is the fastest and easiest way to enter the psychic planes. It's also what will _completely_ awaken your psychic abilities. As it stands now, you are able to tap into the planes but you are not truly able to enter them. You're... on the cusp, so to speak. You can do mild things, like see and speak to soul cards such as your Blue Eyes, but none of your other cards can be heard, nor can they hear you. Once you've truly awakened, you will be able to enter the planes at will, in time, and hear and speak to any one of your cards.

"To start, you need to relax, so close your eyes and breath." Lisa, who had been meditating for years, was able to easily begin meditating, but she saw that Kaiba was not. To the outside observer he may have appeared to be meditating, but the energy around a person shifts when a meditative trance begins, and that energy every psychic is able to sense, and it was that same energy that told Lisa that, no, he was not relaxing.

When, after hours of trying, with periodic breaks to keep them both at least somewhat calm, Lisa let out a sigh that was part resignation, and part annoyance.

"All right. We'll do this the old-fashioned way. I'd hoped that you'd be able to do this without aid, but it is what it is. Many people need the aid when they first learn to meditate." After Kaiba had sat down and, humoring her to keep his brother happy, closed his eyes and slowed his breathing, hearing again the words 'don't force it' from Lisa, he then heard movement that told him that she was standing up and walking somewhere. He then heard gentle clicks that he couldn't identify. He was about to open his eyes and see what she was doing when the soft, unmistakable sound of music, told him that she had inserted a CD.

He may not have believed anything she was saying, but he couldn't deny she had chosen the music well. It was soft and designed to put the listener at ease. He doubted it would work on him. He was immune to such pathetic attempts to sway him in any way. After a few minutes of the soft flutes, stringed instruments, and the odd soft drumbeat, however, he found himself slowly, but steadily, relaxing despite himself.

When he realized that her pathetic attempts to make him do what she wanted were working, he tried to tune out the music, and then found to his dismay that he couldn't. He was too relaxed to focus. He, as disgusting as the phrase was, _sensed_ more than felt the carpet underneath him, and then, as insane as it was, was certain he sensed a satisfied smile from his 'teacher' as he relaxed. He was about to open his eyes and demand that she shut the infernal sound off when he slipped fully into a meditative trance and relaxed completely, mind open to whatever it was she was planning, and unable to stop himself from doing so.

"Relax, Kaiba, I'm not going to do anything," Lisa said calmly, sensing what she would never see on his stoic face, the worry that, in his helpless state, she would harm him, or worse, his brother. It was those words that let Kaiba fully relax and stop fighting the meditation. The instant he relaxed, so did she, having been worried that it wouldn't work, at least not immediately. Glancing at the CD player, she saw that it had been timed well. The soothing music would play for a few more minutes, allowing Kaiba to enjoy the peace he was, despite himself, feeling.

The shift in music was subtle. The drumbeats becoming slightly more frequent, the beat and rhythm becoming slightly faster, Kaiba was barely aware of these changes. By the time he realized that the music had changed from soothing to... something else entirely that he couldn't identify, it was already affecting him. This wasn't at all the soothing music she had put on to relax him. This was something that, as impossible as it was, felt older. It seemed to speak to parts of him that he didn't know existed. The parts that weren't the cold, logical CEO, but instead spoke to something older, primal, almost _pure_.

The instant he realized this, everything exploded around him. His eyes were still closed, but he _saw_ everything. Colors were brighter, more vibrant, sounds more explosive. It was as if someone had taken his senses and put them into overdrive. He could sense his surroundings, and he could even sense beyond this room. The pendant on his neck felt like it was glowing with a white-hot heat, even as his breathing quickened as he tried to comprehend what was happening around him.

Nearby, he felt his brother start to move towards him, noticing the change in him and probably hearing his quickened breathing. He just as clearly felt Lisa hold him back, saying things that ordinarily he wouldn't be able to make out, but with everything being so much more than it should have been, he clearly hear her say 'Don't. If you interrupt this now, he'll be in worse shape than he was when I saw him yesterday.' He also sensed that she, despite her calm tone, was worried.

Lisa watched on quietly from where she stood next to Mokuba, a hand on his shoulder to prevent him from trying to go to Kaiba. She had known this would happen, she had planned on this happening, but everyone handled this differently. Some people embraced this explosion, and others ran from it in terror. From the look of things, Kaiba was not handling this, but she was as helpless as Mokuba to stop what was happening. She tightened her grip on Mokuba's shoulder reflexively when the amulet started to glow. While it was not as bright as what Kaiba felt, it was still noticeable to the trained eye. The amulet glowing could only mean that Kaiba was trying to fight this as he fought everything that had happened, and the amulet was working harder to prevent his mind from shattering.

Lisa remembered something that she had learned once, long ago. But she had never tried it herself. Sometimes a psychic could enter another's mind while both were in a trance. It had been done for her, and she had seen her teachers do it for others. It was risky, however. If it didn't work, they could both become trapped where Kaiba was, unable to escape the mid-point between the psychic plane and the physical one, where Kaiba was currently struggling to control himself. Her eyes locked onto the amulet, hoping beyond hope that the glow would settle. When it did the opposite and became brighter, she knew she had no choice.

"Mokuba, I need you to stay perfectly still," she said urgently, barely waiting for the small, hesitant nod before sitting down and entering a meditative trance, years of practice allowing her to enter it at will. She focused her entire being on the pendant Kaiba wore, the small part of herself that remained in it her only link to him. Ironically, his stubborn refusal to wear the amulet was the reason she was still linked to it. If he had worn it all that week as she had asked, the amulet would have attuned itself to Kaiba's psychic energy instead of still being tuned, at least in part, to her own.

With one final exhale to steady herself, she willed her mind to go towards Kaiba, using the amulet as a homing beacon of sorts. When she found him, he was in much the same state as she saw him the day before, huddled in a ball trying to control himself.

"Kaiba, relax," she said softly.

"What did you _do_ to me?" Kaiba yelled at her, though something seemed odd about it to Lisa, who dismissed the thought as she didn't have time to focus on anything else.

"I did nothing. This was supposed to happen. I had hoped that you would be able handle it," Lisa replied calmly. "And if you don't relax, we'll both be trapped here, perhaps forever. This is the mid-way. The point where the psychic plane and the physical one meet. That's why you're able to see everything, even though your eyes are closed. You're _sensing_ your surroundings and your mind, used to translating everything into sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches, is again translating what your psychic abilities are sensing into things that you can understand. Everything is so much more than what you're used to because, in this place, you're sensing not just what your physical body is able to tell, but your surroundings as they truly _are_._ This_ is the true awakening. _This_ is what it is to be a psychic. And _this_ despite your doubts and protests, is who you are, who you were meant to be."

As she talked Kaiba, who had something that he at least knew was real since, in this place, Lisa looked and sounded as she usually did, started relaxing, focusing on this girl instead of the overload of senses around him. As he relaxed, things started spinning around him. He reflexively shut his eyes to it, though that did little good as he could still _fee_l his surroundings spinning out of control. When it stopped, he opened his eyes cautiously and let out an involuntary surprised gasp.

The world as he knew it looked normal again in the sense that nothing was more than it should have been, but there were also shadows that shouldn't have been there. Ghosts of images.

"What in the world happened?" Kaiba asked, not realizing that he had spoken.

"This, is the first plane," Lisa said. "The ghosts your seeing are the shadows of the duel monsters cards you and I are connected to. It also means that you've truly awakened. You'll never have to go experience the mid-way again unless you choose to, which many people do. They enjoy sensing things as they truly are. It makes them feel whole."

"And how exactly am I supposed to _leave_ this 'first plane'?" Kaiba asked, to Lisa's surprise not scornfully. If she didn't know better, she would almost think that was respect in his voice.

"People all have different ways of entering and leaving the psychic planes," Lisa said with a shrug. "Some picture themselves floating to and from their bodies, others picture a physical door that they open and step through, I have a friend who said that the trick was to click your heels three times and say 'there's no place like home' though I'm pretty sure she was joking. At the core, every method is the same. You have to _desire_ to enter and leave the psychic plane. If even a part of you does not wish to leave, or enter for that matter, then you're stuck." After she had explained this, Lisa left Kaiba to experience the first plane as he desired, comfortable with the knowledge that he was all right now.

When she opened her eyes she sensed Kaiba also returning to the physical world. When he opened his eyes, for the briefest of moments she saw the wonder, and even a hint of awe, at what he had just experienced.

"Don't stand up just yet, Kaiba," she said, seeing that he was about to do just that. "You've been in a sitting position for hours, we both have. It will take us both a minute before we can stand without falling." Once they had both adjusted, they slowly stood up, stretching slightly to relieve cramped muscles. Lisa walked over to her CD player and turned it off, putting the disk back inside its case.

"You two are welcome to stay for dinner," she offered quietly, though she suspected that Kaiba would decline the offer. She was proven right when, after a moment, Kaiba shook his head and said in his usual cold voice 'No thanks.' She wasn't surprised. Not only was the CEO antisocial, he would also need time to absorb what he had experienced.

Once she had seen her guests to the door, she walked to the kitchen and prepared herself a meal, taking her own time to absorb what had happened. Over and over again she turned over what had seemed odd when Kaiba spoke to her in the mid-way. With a start, she looked up once it had clicked.

"Of course!" She exclaimed, thinking herself a fool for not having realized it before. She knew what his secondary power was.

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><p><em><em>AN: Not sure when I'll be inspired again, but I gave y'all a long-ish chapter to make up for it.<em>_


	8. Secondary Power

_AN: Okay. Lots of stuff happened lately. On top of my constant companion of writer's block, I started a new job and moved into an apartment in the past week. Finally got inspired today, so here's hoping._

_Disclaimer: I own nothing._

_Secondary disclaimer: I don't actually believe in psychic abilities. All powers that I mention in this story are my interpretation of the psychic world._

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><p>Over the next week, Kaiba found himself slowly but surely returning to normal. He still wasn't sure what the so-called 'psychic' had done to him, but once he did, he was going to sue her for everything she owned.<p>

The only strange thing that was still a lingering effect (other than the implanted illusions, of course), was that he could not seem to take of the pendant for more than a few moments at a time. Part of it was his brother's insistence that he not take it off. Part of it was that he remembered the near insanity that he had gone through. Perhaps it was subliminal, though he doubted that subliminal messages really had as much power as people claimed they did, but he found himself completely unwilling to remove the pendant. He wasn't going to try and break whatever it was that she had done to him until he knew _exactly _what it was.

He decided that the only way to learn what she had done to him was to play along with her little game and in doing so closely observe her every action. To that effect, he closely observed her when she was doing her 'readings.' He grudgingly had to accept the fact that she was perhaps better at reading people than he was. Beyond the initial exchange of cards, she never once glanced at the person she read, and instead looked only at the cards.

The most confusing part of her readings was that, when he looked closely at her eyes, they _did_ in fact take on a lighter tint. Not enough to be noticeable to anyone who wasn't looking specifically for it, but enough to give him pause to wonder, for the moment she had stopped reading, her eyes faded back to their original color. So it wasn't colored contacts that was causing the effect. Perhaps a trick of the lighting? Except that, too, didn't make sense as the light didn't reflect off of her eyes in the way that would make them appear even a little bit lighter.

Stranger still was when she made her pendants. He closely watched everything she did. While she closely guarded the secret behind how she grew her crystals, she had allowed him to see exactly what she used in making them, knowing that the nearly infinite possible combinations of ingredients would make it difficult for even him to glean the recipe without watching her. None of the ingredients were capable of, even with body heat, changing the color of the crystal. Yet time and again he clearly saw them change their color when she focused on them.

For her part, Lisa knew that Kaiba's sudden interest in her psychic abilities was false and that he had an ulterior motive. She didn't have to be psychic to see the suspicion in his eyes every time he observed her. However, she allowed the lie on his part, pretending to be innocent to it. She hoped that, in his feigning interest, he would actually learn something. It was well known that Seto Kaiba didn't miss much. She saw no problem in using that fact to her advantage. So she allowed him into her most private aspects of what she did. She allowed him what no one else had ever been allowed, a glimpse at how she made her crystals, a secret that charm-makers guarded jealously. It was her secret sanctum, and for Kaiba to be allowed to see it even once, though he didn't know it, was the highest honor that he could have been given.

Things were moving too slowly, however. At the school, Anna had gotten more anxious, and Lisa herself was starting to notice the weakening veil. It wasn't anything that was visible yet, but there was a constant aura of something she couldn't place around her. The people who she did readings for had started to notice. Lisa, who before had seemed the picture of calm, was becoming agitated. Jumping at shadows, looking around her suddenly as if she had heard something that no one else had. Constantly, she observed the elder Kaiba brother. For the moment, he noticed nothing out of the ordinary. A thing she wasn't sure was a blessing or a curse.

One day, as Kaiba was walking home from school, he heard the obnoxiously loud voice of Joey Wheeler. Of course, since dogs prefer to travel in packs, the rest of the 'gang' was with him as well. He turned in surprise when he heard a startled shout. A very large branch had fallen from a tree that the mutt was walking under. Just when he was sure that Wheeler would be crushed under its weight, he thought he saw a glint at his neck. Focusing quickly on it, he saw it was the pendant that Lisa had given him. Hearing a crash, he looked and saw that the branch, which should have hit his schoolmate, had landed centimeters in front of him.

"Look at the _size_ of that branch!" Joey exclaimed, a small amount of fear in his voice as he realized just how much damage that would have done to him. "Lucky for me it missed."

Unbidden, a voice came to Kaiba's mind as the whisper of a memory he had thought forgotten was brought to the forefront.

_"The blond boy who I read earlier has a classic good-luck charm, I suspect he was drawn to it because it will enhance his own fairly uncanny good luck. Good-luck charms are signified by their pale yellow color."_

He didn't want to believe it, but he had seen the yellow pendant glow with his own eyes. And as the mutt had been in complete shadow, it was definitely not the reflection of the sun or another light source.

Suddenly it was as if that one memory, that one fact opened the proverbial floodgates of his 'abilities.' There were whispers of vague threats around him. Not as an audible voice, but more the human body's natural 'sixth sense.' The instinctive ability to know when a threat is approaching. He quickly resumed walking, though he was suddenly regretting not having had Roland or someone else drive the limo to take him the short distance to Lisa's shop. Almost unaware of it, he quickened his pace to that of a quick walk, almost a jog. Almost trance-like, he reached for his deck and, pulling out the top card, saw it was the Blue Eyes White Dragon. Uncertain as to why he did it, he grabbed the next two cards. They were also his treasured Blue Eyes cards.

Another memory, unbidden, came to mind.

"_The reaction that I got from this card tells me that this is what is known as a 'Soul Connection.' This card will always be in your deck when you need it, and will always come to your aid without question."_

The last few blocks, to the confused and—though he would never admit it—terrified CEO seemed like a yawning abyss that he had to cross. Had he paid attention to Lisa when she spoke to him in her 'lessons' instead of trying to figure out what she had done to him, he might have been able to focus enough to reach out to his cards. To sink into the second plane and feel the comfort they were trying to give. Instead, his thoughts ran wild and, guided by an instinct that he was powerless to control, went towards the one person who had been a source of calm in this mess.

"_Lisa!"_

Lisa let out a cry of pain as the plea slammed into her mind, coupled by the physical pain of her wrist again being sliced open as she was making more pendants. She quickly grabbed a piece of cloth and wrapped it tightly around her hand. Telepathy was hard enough when she _was_ completely focused, even when talking to someone who was very experienced with the power and knew to keep as many emotions out as possible, or to at least lesson their effect on the recipient. Unfocused, and trying to reach someone who was not only a skeptic, but had never even attempted to touch his secondary power, and as such had no idea how to use it, this was going to be next to impossible. She winced again as the untrained and unfocused mind again slammed into her.

"To heck with courtesy," she snarled, for there were rules of etiquette for both people. One of which was that only the power of telepathy should be used. Setting aside every rule about this that she had had drilled into her by telepaths, she spiraled into the sixth plane, calling out to the Psychic Kappa even before the card was fully able to register her need. Merging her mind with its, she was given a new clarity, and was able to, finally, respond. To Kaiba it would sound as if she was speaking to him from under water, as using a monster as buffer like this would give her voice some of the attributes of the monster, in this case the fact that it was a Water attribute would come, but it would be clear.

"_Calm _down_, Kaiba,"_ she commanded, rude as it was. She softened her voice when she realized both that for his secondary power to have reached her on his own, against his will, that he had to be in a very bad state emotionally and his powers, instinctively, had reached to her, as well as the fact that the cold, logical CEO wouldn't expect the response and to sound harsh would make things worse.

"_Calm down. I'll explain things when you reach me,"_ she said more kindly, already unsure how to do this. Untrained, Kaiba didn't know how to truly respond, and it was only the fact that he knew she could help him that she had been able to hear his cry at all. He also didn't know how to _end_ the conversation. Lisa bit her lip nervously. For a primary, or even a secondary telepath, ending another telepath's initiated conversation wasn't a problem. But she could only communicate telepathically when one had reached out to her, and as such, she was uncertain how to end it properly.

"_Kaiba, I need you to focus right now. Picture the most important person or thing to you."_ Part of Lisa regretted that she had to specify it being the most important thing, as his lack of training meant that everything would be open to her, and she wouldn't be able to avoid seeing what it was he valued above all. It was an extraordinary violation of his privacy, but it had to be done. The only thing Lisa found surprising about the image that she saw Kaiba focus on was the fact that she was surprised. She should have known that the only one that could possibly take the place as the most valued would be Mokuba.

As Kaiba calmed, Lisa felt it clearly. And as she had hoped, Kaiba's rational mind would take the place of his instincts, and he would shut her out forcefully. It was painful for her, but it was the best-case scenario until he knew how to properly withdraw. She quickly took two Excedrin for her headache and then walked to the mirror, reaching out to her brother through the purest connection there was: blood.

"What's wrong?" Ray asked the second the connection had been formed. In using a power that she could not touch except through her brother, he had felt a shadow of her own pain, both physical and psychic.

"Can you get Tom? He's needed." Right after Lisa had realized what Kaib's secondary power was, she had contacted her brother asking to speak to Tom. While he was also only a secondary telepath, he was the best person possible to ask about this because his primary power was to teleport. So long as he could see where he was going, he could reach it.

Moments later, Tom appeared. Tall and dark haired, he could have been another of Lisa's siblings if it weren't for the fact that his eyes were a light brown instead of the near-black that was passed to everyone in Lisa's family.

"His secondary power awoke?" Tom asked without preamble. Lisa nodded tiredly, stepping to the side so that her friend would have room to cross. The second he appeared in her work-room, he made eye contact with Lisa, gently probing her memory so that he could quickly know what had happened.

"Ouch," he said with a sympathetic wince. "This is why we prefer to have telepaths awaken in a controlled setting. Otherwise it's messy." Gently he did what he could to sooth the headache brought on by the uncontrolled communication. Had he been a primary telepath, he could have completely removed it. Instead all he could do was reach out and take the edge off of it. Lisa smiled gratefully and then turned as the door to her shop opened.

"Kaiba," she said, walking to the door of her workroom and opening it. She had known he was close to her shop, and even knew just how far he was. The sudden and uncontrolled connection had left a temporary link that the break of the telepathy hadn't cut off. It made her acutely aware of where the CEO was and what his mental and emotional state was, a thing that she knew would be happening to him as well. She'd hoped that Tom could remove it, for that sort of connection wasn't one that should be present.

"Kaiba, this is Tom. He's a telepath like you, so he's the one who's best able to help you with this. He has a short-cut, though. Where I need several weeks, even months, to teach you the gift of the Card Speakers, he can teach you in a few hours." Tom locked eyes with Kaiba and formed a connection, jumping in surprise when he felt what he couldn't in his probe of Lisa's mind, the mental link between the two of them.

"The first thing I need to do, however, is remove this link. I unfortunately can't remove it completely, but it will stop the constant awareness."

"What all will it _leave_, though?" Asked Lisa. Telepaths were wary of any sort of link being left between minds that had just been in communication, as the effects were generally unpredictable.

"The two of you lucked out. It will be a very minor effect. Basically, in the same way Lisa can communicate to her brother through mirrors without him first contacting her, she'll be able to reach out to communicate with you telepathically. And only you. You, on the other hand, can talk telepathically to any psychic you want to, though the connection will probably be the quickest with Lisa." As he spoke, he was removing 'mental tie' as it was called. Lisa could instantly feel when it had left her, minus the small trace that had been explained.

"If Kaiba had gotten here a minute earlier, I could have completely removed it," Tom said with an easy-going shrug. "On the other hand, a minute later and I couldn't have done anything, so I'm not complaining. Now then, I guess you need trained. This way, please." Tom, Lisa, and Kaiba all walked to her house, settling down in the den for the sake of privacy.

As Lisa sat down quietly, Tom connected to Kaiba to teach him in what even non-telepaths agreed was the 'purest way.' Directly.

* * *

><p><em>AN: Rough spot to leave it, but it's the best I've got considering that it's late. Hopefully I can update soon, but I make no promises.<em>


	9. Duel

_Disclaimer: I own nothing._

As Tom and Kaiba sat in silence during the teaching process, Lisa, having heard other telepaths complain about headaches after a telepathic teaching, had the foresight to grab a bottle of pain killers and two glasses of water and set it down next to them. Having done that, she grabbed a book and sat down to read.

An hour later, a grateful Kaiba and Tom took the pills and ate the food, the telepathic session finally over.

"I've done what I can. The rest I believe you can explain better than I can. Primary planes being the same might make it easier for you," Tom said. The telepathic undercurrent that he had slipped in expressing shock at how Kaiba could still be a skeptic after talking to someone, and being responded to, completely between minds. Seeing that Kaiba wasn't looking, Lisa rolled her eyes and shot back 'Welcome to my world.'

Tom quickly summarized everything that he hadn't been able to explain, and then wished her luck, teleporting out. Lisa quickly smothered a smirk at the knowledge that Tom specifically waited to teleport until he knew Kaiba was looking. They were both trying to prove, to the best of their abilities, that what they were talking about was real.

"Feel free to try and discover how we might have hoaxed that, Kaiba," Lisa said. "Particularly when it started when you were far away from this building." In response, Kaiba glared.

"I still haven't seen any proof of any of this madness," he answered. But Lisa noticed that he didn't sound as convinced as usual. She suspected his absolute refusal to accept this was something akin to fear. He didn't know what was going on, so he was clinging to normalcy as much as possible. She could understand that. Even after her famously fractured awakening, it took her a couple of months before she was willing to even _look_ at a card, much less try and let it speak to her.

"_I really wish I had the luxury of a few months to let him adjust,"_ she thought regretfully. _"I've thrown a lot at him and haven't really given him time to cope with it."_

"Walk with me, Kaiba," she said, standing up. "I think for today, you've had enough of me trying to shove this down your throat. So if you'll allow me just one more demonstration, and by the end of it, you're not convinced, I promise you won't hear from me again until next week. She was gambling quite a bit, especially because with every day that passed, she could feel the veil weakening. But she also knew that she needed to prove things to Kaiba, and let him come to terms with what was happening.

They walked for several blocks, and then Kaiba saw what it was Lisa wanted to show him. There was another "psychic" trying the same scam that Lisa was using. The difference was, he was obviously going over the top.

"Kaiba, what I'm about to do is both immoral and unethical. It will also be a _lot _of fun," Lisa said, walking over to the boy.

"Ah! Lisa! My competitor. Come for a reading from a _real_ psychic?"

"When you see a real psychic, let me know," Lisa said. "But actually, I thought we'd have a psychic duel. Since we're both convinced the other one is a sham, whoever wins will claim the other's business." Kaiba looked at her shocked. He knew that that business was all Lisa had. She must have been completely assured of her victory to gamble for such high stakes.

"Agreed," the boy, who's name was Aaron, said, standing up.

"Well, at my school, psychic duels had a very set form. We read each other's decks by holding them, let the other person shuffle, shuffle our own decks, and then, just to make sure that neither of us are cheating, let a person from the crowd shuffle our decks. How did it work at your school?"

"I wasn't trained. My talent is so great, that everything came naturally to me. So we'll go with your... _school's_ method." Lisa was impressed. He did contempt for anything other than 'natural talent' perfectly.

Having agreed on the style of the way the duel started, they exchanged decks, both holding them for about half a minute, before rapidly shuffling, then returning the other's decks to them. Then a person chosen at random by a passerby shuffled their decks. Then they put their decks in their duel disks.

"Before we start, we're both sticking with the fourth plane, right? But, being the challenger, etiquette demands that you choose the plane."

"A schoolgirl like you is no match for my talent. So we'll stick with the lowest plane," Aaron said haughtily.

"Fourth it is, then. By the way, nice magic deck. I'm impressed. Though not so much by your sixth card. You might want to use your fourth card, Reload to get a new hand. None of your first six cards are going to be of any use except that one. What do you think of my hand?" The people watching were confused, as all of this had been said before either of them had drawn a single card. And everyone had watched closely. Lisa hadn't seen a single one of Aaron's cards.

"I never read before a card has been drawn. It's a courtesy, you see," Aaron said. Though he wasn't able to hide his shock at the fact that Lisa was dead on. Every card he'd drawn was useless, the sixth card especially. And his fourth card was, in fact, Reload.

As he reshuffled, Lisa had a distant look in her eyes, as if she was, in fact, listening to someone else speak.

"Ooh, bad luck, that. Your next hand is going to be even worse than what you've currently got, from the way you're shuffling."

"Shut up! Your tactic to psyche me out isn't going to work," Aaron spat. Though he was even more shocked when, again, Lisa was right. This was the second time she'd seemed to know his cards... before he'd drawn them. He couldn't figure it out. She couldn't be cheating because she was calling his hand before he'd drawn it. Except... except for that one lucky guess, she hadn't mentioned any card _names_. Just whether or not the hand would be any good.

"A _real_ psychic would be able to do more than your pathetic attempts to psyche me out," Aaron spat, laying a card face-down in the magic and trap zone. But no more. This card will be the one that brings your defeat."

"On the contrary, all Emperor's Holiday does is make us unable to use equipment spells," Lisa said. "Personally, it won't hurt me much. I don't have that many equipment spells. Though considering the amount that you have, I'm surprised you're putting it down. Heck, I'm surprised you _own_ it seeing as almost all of your magic cards are Equipment spells. Unless... _you_ were trying to psyche _me_ out. Did you not get a good enough read when you handled my deck?" Aaron was shocked. At Lisa's insistence, they had arranged themselves in blind spots so that no one could read their hands and so enable the other to cheat. There was no way she could have seen the card he'd laid down.

"All right! You win! I'm not really psychic!" Lisa sighed sadly.

"I don't like having to humiliate people, believe it or not," she said quietly. "But I dislike people taking my beautiful gift and perverting it as a way to make money even more."

"You're lying! If you hadn't wanted to humiliate me, you wouldn't have done this in front of everyone!"

"If I had wanted to humiliate you, I would have done this in front of more people, with the stakes being that we could not surrender. And then I would proceed to read your entire deck, from top to bottom, even going so far as to tell you what your strategy would be and how I'd counter it. That is how some of my classmates have humiliated frauds like yourself. But in case you forgot, I didn't draw or play a single card. I proved my point, and now I'm going to let you walk away with some modicum of pride left. You can even keep your business, though I doubt anyone will come to you for a reading."

"Impressive," Kaiba said as she walked back to where he was standing out of sight of everyone else. "I'm not sure how you did it, but I doubt it was your so-called 'gift.' You've convinced me of nothing."

"Very well," Lisa sighed. "I'm a person of my word. You won't hear from me for a week. You probably wouldn't have anyway. You're not strong enough to help me with what I'm going to be doing." That said, she walked away, sighing in regret. She could have used his help, if nothing else as a buffer. Someone to loan energy to when hers lowered too far.

Reaching into her pocket, she grabbed the first card there, knowing even before she did so what it would be.

"_Wingweaver, my friend,"_ she said, slipping into the fifth plane, resisting the temptation to go to the sixth and enjoy a more tangible connection with her soul-card, _"we're about to face our toughest challenge yet. And we're having to do it alone."_


	10. The Barrier

_AN: This chapter's a tad disjointed towards the end. It's intentional. If any of it needs clarification, let me know._

_Disclaimer: I own nothing._

After Lisa arrived home, she went into her charm making room. The second she got there, she looked at the mirror which, as she knew it would be, was warping. Sighing in resignation, she walked over to it. She had known that there would be consequences for her 'duel' today. She just hadn't expected them to happen so quickly.

"Found me out already, brother?"

"What did you think you were _doing_? What could have _possibly_ possessed you to do that? You didn't just use your sight in a duel. You used it against a non-psychic. What's worse, you completely humiliated him. Now I know you've been given a lot of leeway with using your gift as you're advertising it in your little business. But this? You broke the cardinal rule, Lisa! If what you were doing wasn't so critical, you'd be shipped back here and had your deck taken from you. That might still happen after your assignment's done. So why did you do something so _foolish_?"

"My opponent was advertising himself as a psychic," Lisa said quietly. "What's more, I was hoping that proof of my skills, something that couldn't be refuted, would convince Kaiba that I'm not lying about any of this. I'm not proud of what I did. And Wingweaver already gave me a lecture. But I needed Kaiba to be a believer. I needed him _here_. Instead, I'll have to make do with my charms. The veil needs repaired. Whether or not I have a buffer doesn't change that my job is to help fix it. Mine and the other card-speakers." She barked out a mirthless laugh. "The school board might not have a chance to discipline me. That should be a comfort to them."

"Lisa..." Ray's voice was pained. He knew what his sister was referring to, and understood exactly the desperation that led her to do something so drastic as break the cardinal rule of not flaunting her gift and especially not using it to humiliate others. Everyone knew the dangers of doing that. It was such flaunting and humiliating that led to the infamous Salem Witch Hunts. They only reason psychics were tolerated now is because they were largely believed to be frauds. Or perhaps delusional. Risks such as the one Lisa took weren't tolerated. It was too dangerous for them.

Ray also knew that his kid sister fully embraced the rules about not flaunting her powers. He knew, better than even other card-speakers, the risk that Lisa was taking. And the desperation that motivated her actions. For card-speakers, the threat of having your deck taken from you was the cruelest thing imaginable. It was largely what made Lisa so careful in _not _flaunting her gifts. She loved her cards too much to risk them. She was also about to risk something far greater than possession of her deck. He couldn't stomach the thought of letting her take that risk. Not without at least trying to do something.

"Is there anything I can do? We're siblings. Surely that-"

"You know better, Ray," Lisa interrupted. "This is the one thing that our blood bond can't do. Besides, you've already got someone you're loaning energy to. You cannot have a second. Besides, it might not be so bad. The accidental connection forged when Kaiba's secondary power awoke means that he might notice and just... react without thinking."

"We are talking about the same person, right? Seto Kaiba? Most famous skeptic known to the psychic world? That Kaiba?"

"You know as well as I that it's the subconscious mind that holds and controls our gift. The conscious mind lets us tap into it, but it's the subconscious that does all the work. And it's the subconscious that reacts when it senses something that can be handled, or needs to be handled, psychically. It's why his secondary power reached out to me, after all. His subconscious recognized a fellow psychic that could help. So, yes. We are talking about the same person. Seto Kaiba. Most famous skeptic _psychic_ known to the psychic world."

"I'm going to do something, Lisa," Ray promised. "I don't know what, yet, but I'm going to do something. If I have to, I will drag Kaiba to you kicking and screaming."

"Don't you dare," Lisa snapped. "I made a promise."

"I'm not bound by your oaths," Ray said with a smirk. "Besides, maybe my primary will convince him. I can do more than talk to people through mirrors, you know." Lisa rolled her eyes and sighed in resignation in response.

"Well, I can't stop you, if you choose to bother him. But don't do anything rash. We still need him willingly using his gifts. Besides," she added with a smirk you should have at least _some_ faith in my charms. You're wearing one, after all."

"Of course I have faith in your charms," Ray said. "But the planes are dangerous places to spend time in. Especially without a buffer."

"Wingweaver will protect me," Lisa said quietly. "With her and my charms working together, I have no worries. Now get going and let me do my job." Ray looked long and hard at his sister. She really wasn't a good liar, and he could see right through her mask of confidence. She was worried. And that worried him.

"All right. Be careful, okay?"

"When aren't I?" Lisa watched as the reflection of her brother warped and faded, until it was only her reflection she saw in the glass. Well, not quite _only_ her own reflection.

"Am I getting a lecture on how dangerous this is from you as well?" she asked her soul-card. She had asked her teachers about this before, since it was unusual for her cards essences to appear in mirrors as they did sometimes. For mirror-gazing card-speakers it wasn't unheard of, but as she was a card-speaking charm-maker, it shouldn't be possible. They suspected that, like Lisa did on occasion, her cards tapped into what little of the mirror-gazing plane they could, piggy-backing off of Ray's gift which, to a small extent, was available to her, in order to communicate with Lisa without her ascending into the planes.

"Not this time, no," Wingweaver answered. "I am merely doing my job and watching over you. You've never undertaken something like this before. I want to be certain that you really can handle the strain."

"Wingweaver, my friend" Lisa said with a smile, "there has yet to be a challenge that we cannot overcome. But I really do need peace to make my charms." Wingweaver nodded in assent and faded from the mirror.

Lisa sighed and, clearing her mind of all worry, focused on the charm she needed to make.

* * *

><p>Kaiba was impressed. He was convinced that nothing would stop Lisa's attempts at brainwashing him into believing that he was 'psychic.' And yet four days had gone by and he hadn't seen or heard from her. A freak accident at the school had caused it to be closed for several days now, but it should be repaired within the week. Something had caused multiple pipes to burst, and by the time the water had been drained (which took surprisingly long), mold had started to form, so it was deemed unsafe for anyone to be in.<p>

Not that it mattered to him. It just meant he had time to work for once. He caught his reflection in his computer screen and glared at it. For Mokuba's sake, he was still wearing that stupid pendant. His little brother tended to get anxious if he went anywhere without it. He hated the fact that he was stuck with this constant reminder of Lisa and her idiotic ideas.

Shaking his head, he had just started to get back to work when,

"Seto Kaiba!" Kaiba whirled around to the source of the noise. How could anyone have sneaked past him? His desk was facing the door. Whoever it was was going to... his train of thought was broken when he saw the source of the voice. It was coming from a mirror that he'd gotten as a gift some years ago. He didn't even know why he'd kept it. Specifically it was coming from the face insid the mirror. A face that he knew.

"Ray, wasn't it? And here I was just thinking that maybe Lisa was someone who's word could be trusted. I should have known that someone as obviously psychotic as her would-"

"Insult my sister again and you'll learn where the phrase 'spontaneous combustion' came from," Ray spat, glaring daggers at Kaiba with flames just visible around him.

"Lisa didn't ask me to talk to you. In fact she asked me _not_ to do so. But as it happens, I'm not bound by my little sister's promises, just as she is not bound by mine. And now you and I are going to have a nice long chat."

"I'm not sure _how_ you're doing this," Kaiba said. "But if you think I'm going to talk to a mirror, you're sadly mistaken."

"I don't," Ray said. To Kaiba's shock, the mirror warped, and slowly but surely Ray started leaving his mirror and the next thing Kaiba knew, Ray was standing in his office. An office that Kaiba knew for a fact had only one door.

"Hope you don't mind the imposition," Ray said with a cheerful smile. "But I didn't want you walking off on me. In one of the higher mirror-gazing planes, you can walk through mirrors. You just have to be able to see where you're going. It is, admittedly, _extremely_ rude of me to just drop in on you uninvited, but desperate times, and all that.

"Come to think of it... you must think I'm a terrible person. You've seen me twice, and both times I've been rather rude. Well, nothing for it. Hopefully you'll change your mind eventually."

"What are you doing here?" Kaiba asked, collapsing to his chair in shock. He was a veritable prisoner in his own office. He couldn't call security because he knew there was no way to explain how Ray could have gotten into his office. The security cameras would show that Ray hadn't entered through the door, and he didn't need the trouble of trying to explain his presence.

"We'll get to that. But first, could you put your... phone thing in your ear?" Ray asked, indicating the small bluetooth on Kaiba's desk. "That way it looks like you're on a conference call, since I'm very conveniently not in view of your camera up there." He indicated the security camera above Kaiba's door. Kaiba quickly calculated the angles and determined that Ray was right. He'd managed to appear just outside of the camera's frame. "It's better for you to do that, anyway. Otherwise you look crazy, talking to thin air like this. A little slight of hand, and a quick change of direction, and it will just look like the... phone thing... was in your ear the entire time but it just wasn't visible on the camera." Kaiba hated to admit it, but Ray was right, and within moments the bluetooth was in his ear.

"Thank you. Now as for why I'm here... I'll get to that in a minute. First, I think you should know a little bit of mine and Lisa's history." Ray snapped his fingers and the mirror warped yet again.

"The highest plane of mirror-gazers lets us show people images as if they were recorded," Ray said in explanation.

A woman was in the glass, obviously Lisa and Ray's mother considering how closely they resembled her.

"Our mother was a psychic," Ray said. "She died without telling our father or us about her gift. Cancer. She died slowly and painfully. Lisa was too young to really remember it. But I wasn't so lucky." He grinned in amusement at Kaiba's surprise. "I'm much older than I look. I take after our father in that respect. He tends to look several years younger than he actually is. But I digress. Our mother could see into the future. She was one of the rare psychics who didn't have a secondary gift. But that made her lone gift that much stronger."

"Wait a second. Lisa said that _both_ your parents traveled on business," Kaiba interrupted.

"Stepmother. As young as Lisa was when our mother died, she's generally able to think of our stepmother as her birth mother. But again, I digress." Again, the mirror warped, and two small children were playing a card game.

"My sister and I were always uncannily lucky with card games. Do you know the game Hi Lo?" A glance at Kaiba showed the affirmative nod. "Well, we could almost always guess correctly if the face-down card was higher or lower. We were good at other card games, too. To the point where no one would play against us because we would almost always win. Then the people from the school came. They told us about our mother. And then said that I was on the verge of awakening into my own gifts. Not knowing what they would be, all of the possible ones were explained." Ray laughed a little.

"I admit, when I heard about card-speakers, I was certain that I would be one. I just _knew_ it. It had to be why I was so good at card games. And the way it was described. To always have a friend and companion nearby, to have that closeness. I wanted that. When it was discovered that no, I was not a card-speaker, I was disappointed. You can imagine how angry I was when Lisa fractured. She had stolen 'my' gift. She was the one who could speak with cards. I had been piggy-backing off of her gift the entire time. It's still a source of bitterness, even though she's been a fully awakened psychic for several years now."

* * *

><p>Lisa was as ready as she could be. She had made several protection charms and strengthening charms. Closing her eyes, she quietly relaxed her mind, only absently aware that around her, her charms were starting to glow in response to her gathering her psychic energy.<p>

Slowly, Lisa entered the first plane of card-speakers. Hovering there for a moment, she felt the beginning connections with her cards form. Moving just as slowly, she rose up into the second plane. This slow movement until she was at the border between the fifth and sixth planes. Once there, she stopped. Opening her eyes, she could barely even see the room she was sitting in. all around her were her cards, and essences of cards near by. And, in the distance, essences of cards she wasn't connected with personally, but could still feel the presence of. What she didn't feel, however, were her fellow card-speakers. Her task was dangerous enough without trying to do this solo. She waited.

* * *

><p>"Lisa tells me she only told you a little bit about the planes," Ray said. Kaiba nodded in assent, pretending to write something down to keep up the illusion of a lengthy conference call.<p>

"Well, I don't pretend to know her planes, but I can tell you that what she's doing requires being in them. It also requires a buffer. Which she needed you to be."

"A what?"

"A buffer. Basically someone to psychically connect with her and give her energy when she needed it. You're to young a psychic to actually do the manual labor of repairing the barrier. But you can loan energy. Without you, she's going to find herself in a dangerous position. But she's still doing her duty."

"So why aren't you being her buffer if you care so much about her?" Kaiba demanded sardonically.

"Because I can't. You can only be a buffer to one person, and it has to be someone who shares either your primary or secondary gifts. I'm a buffer to a mirror-gazing card-speaker. I left her to plead with you to at least loan her energy should she need it. I don't know what all this is going to entail, but I do know that it's dangerous. I'm only risking being here right now because when I left, the girl I'm buffering wasn't even close to being ready to try and repair the barrier. And the other card-speakers at the school didn't seem to be, either."

* * *

><p>Lisa felt and psychically acknowledged other card-speakers as they entered. By communication through the cards they were so close to, they had decided that the primaries would take on the task first, and the secondaries would support them if needed.<p>

It was a bit of a thrill to feel the presence of so many other card-speakers, even the seriousness of the task at hand didn't dampen the joy it was to be with her own kind after so long away from the school. Greetings were called out and returned as they waited for the few stragglers to appear.

* * *

><p>"I don't know what you thought to accomplish by coming here, but you haven't succeeded," Kaiba said. "Now I'll thank you to leave."<p>

"Fine," Ray said bitterly, glaring at Kaiba. "I'll leave. But know this. If my sister dies because you weren't there to buffer her and she ran out of energy, I will hold you personally responsible for her death. Her blood will be on your hands." Focusing on the mirror, he again entered it. After a few moments, the glass was again pristine and Kaiba took the bluetooth out of his ear.

"Ridiculous. He actually thought that anything he said or did could convince me that there's some great danger." But no matter how he argued it, he couldn't get around the fact that Ray had entered a room with only one door without actually using said door. And he had seemed so sincere in his arguments...

* * *

><p>Ray appeared in Amy's room, obviously agitated.<p>

"I take it it didn't go well?" The girl he was going to buffer asked.

"Terribly. I'm glad you're not ready to fix the barrier yet," Ray answered. "It'll give me time to calm down."

"I thought you knew," Amy said in surprise. "The barrier is in the process of being repaired now. Or at least it's about to be. The primary card-speakers decided to focus on it first. That way us secondary card-speakers wouldn't have the strain of using a secondary gift for long. If any primaries aren't in the fifth plane yet, which is where they're going to be meeting, they will be soon."

Ray collapsed onto Amy's bed, paralyzed with shock and fear. He hadn't known. He knew how quickly Lisa could make charms. He knew she had several at her disposal. He was also terrified it wouldn't be enough.

* * *

><p>The last of the primaries had finally arrived. They were ready. As one, they all ascended into the sixth plane. There were mass feelings of exultation as they merged with their soul-cards, a necessary precaution, even with the buffers. As one, they human-cards rose to the very edge of the sixth plane. Higher than they would dare go alone.<p>

There! The barrier. So weak and threadbare it was a wonder cards hadn't been manifesting long before now.

Was the barrier always this massive? For a moment, they wavered, the immensity of their task hitting them for the first time. Then they pushed aside everything but their gift and focused on repairing the dangerously broken barrier.

* * *

><p>Outside the sixth plane, four of Lisa's protection charms and eight of her strengthening ones glowed more brightly than ever. She really should have asked a primary to make them so she could rest more.<p>

* * *

><p>Kaiba let out an enraged snarl and stood up, storming towards his doors and stalking out of the building. If nothing else, he was going to give Lisa the yelling of her life for her interfering with his private affairs.<p>

* * *

><p>Ray stood up from the toilet that he had darted to shakily. His terror had made him physically ill. They were repairing the barrier. Lisa was alone. And if anything went wrong he couldn't be there. He needed to stay with Amy.<p>

* * *

><p>They had underestimated how difficult this would be. Cries of pain were starting to be heard.<p>

Tiffany-Mystic Box (Tiffany was one of the rare card-speakers that was bonded to a card that wasn't a monster card) dropped out. The human had been ill recently. No one was surprised that she couldn't maintain the energies for long. And no one blamed her.

Moments later, Amy-Kuriboh, with Ray's presence felt as a shadow, appeared.

* * *

><p>Unnoticed by even their maker, hairline cracks started to appear in Lisa's charms.<p>

* * *

><p>Kaiba was almost to Lisa's store. He was livid. But behind the anger, there was a pressure in his skull. He had a flash of Lisa, sitting in her library looking abnormally pale. Then it was gone. Wondering what it was, and despite himself feeling worry that maybe Ray's prattling was true, he quickened his step slightly.<p>

* * *

><p>The first of Lisa's charms shattered, some of the crystal cutting into Lisa's skin as it flew in all directions. All around her, her charms were glowing intensely, some of them resonating with energy. A few of them starting to show cracks.<p>

* * *

><p>Brad-Summoned Skull dropped out. Rebecca-Divine Dragon Ragnarok appeared in his place. Primaries were dropping almost more quickly than secondaries could replace them.<p>

Lisa-Wingweaver started to waver in strength. Gritting their teeth with effort, they called on more charms, noting for the first time that the buffer they were providing was less than when they had entered the sixth plane. Setting the problem aside for the more important one at hand, they called up the energy they provided, and redoubled their efforts on the barrier.

It was working. Slowly. So slowly. The barrier was being repeaired.

Lisa-Wingweaver wavered again. The hated Psychic Kappa, that wretched lizard that the human girl kept needing to call upon because the soul-card could not provide the psychic strength needed, appeared to offer its aid. They sent it away. This was something for human and soul-card to handle. No others were needed.

* * *

><p>Kaiba stopped two blocks away. Sweating and panting as if he had just run a marathon. The pressure in his head was getting worse. And more and more flashes were visible.<p>

* * *

><p>Six charms shattered. Lisa was now bleeding from several shallow cuts, and a handful of relatively deep ones.<p>

* * *

><p>Lisa-Wingweaver wavered yet again. Their charms were now almost non-existent. The hated Kappa was there again. They had no choice. They allowed him to loan his energy. It wouldn't be able to last for long.<p>

* * *

><p>Kaiba was gritting his teeth in pain. The closer he got to Lisa's store, the worse it got. It felt like something was trying to burst from him.<p>

* * *

><p>The rest of Lisa's charms went.<p>

* * *

><p>Lisa-Wingweaver screamed in pain. While others had dropped out, they disappeared. The shock disrupted the efforts of the barrier for a moment.<p>

Ray's shadow was gone, Lisa's brother had passed out when he felt his sister's energy explode and then vanish. Amy-Kuriboh dropped out, the pressure being too great without the buffer.

The effort had failed for today. There weren't enough psychics left to safely try and repair the barrier further today. One by one the psychics dropped out. They were upset that they hadn't completed the repairs, but were trying to be content with what they had managed to do.

Now the only question was if they could do it again.

* * *

><p>Kaiba all but screamed in pain, bolting inside the house he had finally reached. Trying the door, he found it locked. Reaching with shaking hands into his pocket, he fumbled the key into the lock, finally managing to make it work.<p>

Quickly entering, only closing and locking the door as a slow afterthought, he darted into the one room he knew she would be in. Her sanctuary.

Lisa was unconscious on the floor, looking deathly pale and bleeding from multiple places.

"Lisa!" Kaiba exclaimed, quickly crossing the distance to her. Checking for a pulse, he found that it was weak, but present.

What happened? Kaiba looked around the room, hoping to discover why Lisa was unconscious. He could discover nothing. There was only one way to find out. He would have to use his so-called 'gift.'

Trying to relax, he attempted to enter the... what had Lisa called it? Right. The fifth plane.

He opened his eyes and...

Nothing. No monsters. No heightened reality. Nothing.

"I should have known it was a trick," Kaiba muttered.

"_Perhaps you should have more faith in your skills. My human wouldn't have spent so much effort on you if you weren't truly a psychic."_

For the second time that day, Kaiba whirled around in shock at a voice behind him. There was a woman crouched behind Lisa, looking at her with love and concern in equal measures. He'd seen her before. Once as a shadow, and once as a picture on a card.

It was Wingweaver.

_AN: Sorry I took so long to get this out. Major writer's block. Hope you enjoyed it._


	11. Acceptance

_AN: Not going to be a long note. I just wanted to say 'thank you' to the seven awesome people who are following this story. I consider one person following to be huge, so to have seven is miraculous. You're all awesome, and I hope you're all enjoying this story._

_Disclaimer: I own nothing and believe in nothing._

"Wingeweaver," Kaiba said, shocked to see the fairy card as the monster in question stood up and faced him, hovering slightly above the ground.

"_So it turns out that it took my human being in this condition for you to willingly use your gift. Looking at you, I can't say that I'm overly impressed. You, a child, an insignificant speck were the human whose aid she needed. Somehow I'm not surprised you failed."_

"And here I thought it was your job to protect her," Kaiba sneered. "Some soul card you are if you couldn't even do that. Perhaps before you accuse others of failing, you should look in the mirror. If you even can."

"_Silence, human!"_ At Wingweaver's exclamation, power flared around her briefly. _"It is only because we are bonded that she is not comatose or dead. I should strike you down where you stand for accusing me of failing her."_

Before Kaiba could answer, a roar filled the room. Before Kaiba could wonder where the source was, one of his Blue Eyes cards appeared, smaller than when he saw the dragon as a hologram, probably so as to fit inside the room.

"_Peace, fairy,"_ the dragon growled. _"I cannot allow you to harm my human."_

"_How the mighty have fallen to be bonded to the likes of him. We've seen his type over the millenia. Self-absorbed. Self-centered. He sees no good in anyone but himself. Cares for no one but himself. I remember when you and your kind would bond with only the noblest of humans. Yet you bond with him."_

"_You were present when the girl read him. You know why it is we chose him."_

"_I have seen none of this so-called 'devotion.' None of this alleged strength. None of his supposed courage. I see a coward. Who's too afraid of the unknown to embrace the wonderful gift we have given him! If he weren't such a coward, my human would not be fading as we stand here!"_

"_What of the Psychic Kappa? Surely he would lend his aid if asked."_ While Blue Eyes was not at all pleased to hear Wingweaver speak so coldly of Kaiba, the state of the card-speaker on the floor was the greater concern. It was also common for soul-cards, when the human that they were bonded with was in any sort of danger, to react as Wingweaver was. Their job was to protect, but they could only do so much. Blue Eyes knew without asking that if there was anything more the fairy in front of him could have done, it would have been done long before his human appeared in the room.

"_The lizard tried. But nothing short of a full merge would do anything. And outside of the planes, that is impossible. The only hope my human has is the foolish boy who is little more than an infant psychically. He would not know how to transfer the needed energy. And even if he did, he is too great a coward to do so."_

"_He is not a coward. Humans fear the unknown. Even yours resisted you at first. We all remember her fracture, surely you, who are so close to her always, have not forgotten. And even if he could transfer energy, she would need to be conscious for it. The psychic link needs to be open on both ends, and she cannot open it."_

"Would someone explain what you two are talking about?" Kaiba asked, finally losing his patience with everything happening.

Before either card could answer, the door opened and Ray entered the room, carrying something under his arm.

"Lisa..." Ray leaned what he was carrying against the wall and knelt next to his sister.

After a moment, he regained his composure and picked up the object, placing it on the desk and leaning it as straight as he could against the wall before uncovering it, revealing it to be a large mirror.

"Wingweaver. I know you don't like doing this with anyone but my sister present, but I need to speak to you. Please."

Kaiba was shocked when Wingweaver faded from his view, only to appear a moment later inside the mirror, much to Ray's relief. Glancing at the CEO, he saw shock and confusion on his face.

"A trick Wingweaver has. The teachers think it's because she's bonded to Lisa, and as such can tap into the first plane of mirror-gazers. None of her other cards can do this."

Turning back to the mirror, he asked "Wingweaver, how is she? Will she be all right?"

"You are not quite correct, Ray, when you say that only I can do this. I am just the only one who tolerates speaking to you," Wingweaver answered before turning her gaze to Lisa.

"For now she lives, but I have never felt her psychic energies so low. Your sister is fading, and there is nothing I can do about it."

Ray collapsed to his knees at this news. Wingweaver smiled sadly at him.

"There is a chance that she will pull through, but it is low."

"Can nothing be done? You're her soul-card, for goodness sake, it's your job to keep her psychically safe!"

"Inside the planes, I could merge with her. Outside of them, I can do little. I have done all I can."

"Could she not be forced inside the planes? I've done it for Anna before, and she for me."

"She would need an energy-bond for that, and she doesn't have one. If Kaiba had been here earlier for this, than perhaps. But he cannot become an energy-bond without her being conscious. The first link has to have both of them aware."

"But... they are bonded," Ray said, slowly. If he weren't so concerned for his sister, he would have laughed at the identical shocked expressions on Wingweaver and Kaiba's faces.

"What are you talking about? He never bonded with my human."

"Not in an energy-bond, no. But Tom was talking to me about it. When Kaiba's secondary awoke, it was rough. It slammed into Lisa and as he didn't know how to properly end the communication, and with Lisa unable to, she had him force her out of his mind. It left a little bit of a link that Tom couldn't fully remove. They were both fully aware at the time of it being formed. Couldn't that be used?"

"It is possible, but he would have to be willing. And I doubt that he would be." Wingweaver laughed at something that Ray could not hear, but given Kaiba's expression of annoyance, he assumed that the CEO could.

"Very well, dragon. If you feel that the human will do it, than I'll leave him to you.

"Dragon? Is the Blue Eyes here as well?"

"Yes. He claims Kaiba will do it. If only because his foolish pride won't tolerate my calling him a coward. Even as fond of him as the dragon is, he recognizes his human's faults." The amusement faded a moment later and she turned her gaze towards Kaiba. The desperation in her eyes was something that could not be faked. Neither could the fear. Looking at Lisa, Kaiba could understand why she would be so afraid. Lisa looked to be on death's door.

"I have no right to ask you to do anything for my human. But she would do this for you, and if you do this, I will owe you a debt of gratitude. And we _always_ repay our debts."

Kaiba glared at Wingweaver, but then glanced at Lisa. He may not have liked the alleged psychic, but he also couldn't stand there and not at least try to help. In his ear, the Blue Eyes White Dragon that had appeared to his defense was telling him all that needed to be done.

Apparently all he had to do was reach out telepathically to Lisa and then force her into the planes. According to the dragon, if he got her into the first plane, her cards could bring her to the sixth. It was apparently simple.

Simple. Right.

In front of him, a card that he had only seen a few times and had disregarded for being weak appeared.

"_I can help you,"_ the psychic Kappa offered. _"Enter the sixth plane and I can merge with you enough to help you through this first time of using your gifts. I may not be her soul-card, but I care for Lisa as much as Wingweaver."_

Kaiba's first reaction was to say 'no' and he had even opened his mouth to do so, reaching into his pocket for his phone. He would call for an ambulance, see to it that she got proper medical care, and then wash his hands of this insanity. Why he was still here at all, and talking to these supposed monsters, he couldn't begin to fathom.

"It is too late now to deny that this is real," Wingweaver said quietly. "Once you willingly entered the fifth plane, you had embraced this. There is no other possible way that you could have done so. A hospital could do nothing for her. Not even the strongest psychics could. Without your help, she will die. And I will see to it that the rest of your short life is full of trouble and pain. When the barrier collapses, we will be able to physically manifest in your world, instead of being bound to ours. Not even your soul-card could protect you from my wrath."

Kaiba wanted to argue. He wanted to wash his hands of this insanity, pretend that he had never met Lisa, never been to her home. That his was all just some insane nightmare. But at the same time he couldn't. Wingweaver was right. Once he had decided to enter the fifth plane, he could no longer turn back. And Lisa was looking worse with every second that passed. Resigned to the fact that he could no longer deny this, he settled down onto the floor and entered the sixth plane.

Psychic Kappa was immediately there, as were the three Blue Eyes monsters. The presence of all of the cards that he could feel hit him like a tidal wave. All of them reaching out for him, offering their power. The force of it was almost enough to push him from the sixth plane, but the dragons were there, acting as a barrier between himself and the other cards. Only the Psychic Kappa was able to get to him.

Where the presence of the dragons was an uplifting force, much like people imagine flying under their own power would be, freeing and strong, the presence of the Kappa was like being submerged in a river. The Psychic Kappa's energy flowed over him gently. The merge was slow, and it was also incomplete. How Kaiba knew this, he couldn't say, but it was obvious to him that this was not a full merge. Setting that thought aside for later, he and the Kappa sought out the connection that he had with Lisa. Once they found it, they followed it to the original source that was Lisa.

Kaiba was shocked when he saw her. The one time he had seen her psychic self was in the Midway. Even though she was not immune to the 'more' that was over everything, she looked at least mostly like herself. This was more ghost than girl, pale and fading with ever second. And she wasn't the only thing fading.

Kaiba's connection with the Psychic Kappa, already weak because he had never had the card and so had never formed any sort of connection with it,was fast disappearing. As was his ability to remain in the sixth plane. There was no time to lose.

Following the whispers of the monsters, Kaiba reached out for the connection again, this time trying to find it as something physical that connected them, something that could be used to force the girl into the first plane, where the echoes of her cards were already waiting. But how could he force her into it? That part had never been fully explained.

"_When you want to actually use a connection with someone, it sometimes helps to picture it as a tangible thing. Like a string."_ The echo of his telepathic lesson came unbidden. _"For telepaths like us, we tend to picture it as those can and string phones that children use. We can see the connecting string and can picture the words traveling along that string to the other person. Every psychic uses imagery when they need to accomplish something. It's the only way our brains can make sense of what we need to do."_

That gave Kaiba an idea. While a can and string phone would be useless to him, a rope would be exactly what he needed. He quickly imagined a rope being tied around Lisa, with himself holding the other end. Once the imaginary rope was secure, he imagined himself pulling her towards himself.

"_Not towards you. We need to rise."_ The Kappa was right. Kaiba wasn't sure where they were, but it wasn't the first plane. Keeping a firm grip on the imaginary rope, he pictured himself rising, letting Lisa be dragged upwards by the rope.

"_We have her!"_ That was the triumphant call of Divine Dragon: Ragnarok. Leaving him to the care of the Blue Eyes White Dragons, Psychic Kappa quickly joined Lisa's cards in the effort of bringing her to the sixth plane, where Wingweaver was waiting to merge with her.

With the help of his soul-card (and he couldn't believe he was willingly calling them that), Kaiba left the planes, feeling completely drained of energy. Looking at a clock, he saw that two hours had passed. He was shocked. He had thought it had only taken a few minutes.

Glancing at Lisa, he saw that, remarkably, she was looking better. She wasn't as deathly pale as she had been the last time he saw her. Feeling for a pulse, he found with relief that it was already improving. Whatever Wingweaver was doing was obviously working.

"She'll be all right now," Ray said, relief evident in his voice. "Wingweaver isn't the only one who owes you a debt, Kaiba," he added, sounding close to tears. "You saved my sister today. I won't soon forget it." He left the room, returning a moment later with food, almost the same thing that Lisa had given him after his Awakening.

He ate it half-heartedly, mind focused on other things. He could no longer deny any of what she had been saying. But now what was he going to do? And what had Wingweaver meant by physically manifesting in his world?

"You might want to finish the meal and then sleep, Kaiba," Ray said. "Lisa has a spare bedroom that she lets me use the few times I've been able to visit her. You're in no condition to go anywhere right now." Recognizing that Ray was telling the truth, he finished his meal and, after getting directions from Ray, walked to his borrowed room, falling asleep almost immediately.

_AN: It occurred to me the other day that the last chapter might have been a little confusing in a couple places, so I'm gonna take a second and explain the ones that I thought of (this might be a lengthy AN, so feel free to skip it)._

_How Ray knew when Lisa fainted: I've explained this in a small way already, but the fact that they are both siblings (and psychics) means that, on some level, they are connected. When something major happens to one, the other knows it. It won't be for minor things like stubbing a toe, or pricking a finger, but for something like Lisa being in critical condition after draining herself psychically (the only reason she survived was because of her soul-card), the psychic backlash was enough that Ray was immediately aware of it. And this same backlash was strong enough to literally force him out of the planes and back into his own body, so to speak, and with enough force that he lost consciousness. Think of it as being similar to the 'twin sense' that you sometimes hear about with identical twins. It's that same sort of connection._

_How Kaiba knew what was happening with Lisa: Remember the link that was accidentally forged when Kaiba's secondary power awoke? Well that became important in a way that I wasn't expecting. I knew that I was going to take advantage of it later in the story, but hadn't expected its relevance to appear in the way it did this early on. As Lisa said, it's the subconscious mind that controls psychic powers. While she was in the sixth plane, a small part of her subconscious reached out to Kaiba, much the way his reached out to her. It wasn't as strong as when Kaiba's subconscious reached out to Lisa because largely she was focusing on repairing the barrier. She wasn't able to call out to Kaiba, but it was enough to give him brief flashes of what was going on around her, as well as give him an echo of the pain she was in. It was her subconscious's way of trying to save her, reaching out to the only person that could help her, making for an interesting reversal of roles, actually._

_Let's see... anything else from the last chapter that I should explain? The crystals that Lisa had placed around her were the spirit-strengthening ones, as well as spirit-protecting ones. She was counting on them to keep her alive and safe, at least long enough to attempt to repair the barrier. The reason that they shattered was because Lisa was tapping into them (she was doing quite a bit psychically), using them as the 'buffer' she was hoping Kaiba could be. They were resonating with her psychic energy as she tapped into them. They shattered because the psychic energy was too much for them to handle. The only reason they lasted as long as they did was because Lisa had placed quite a few around her. If she had only relied on one or two, they would have shattered in seconds and she wouldn't have lasted nearly as long as she did, even with Psychic Kappa and Wingweaver helping her._

_This chapter was one of the hardest to write yet. Trying to keep someone in character who's doing something so completely _out_ of character isn't easy. I imagine the rest of the story will be as difficult, so don't expect quick updates. And I promise that I'll try to keep Author's Notes short from now on._


	12. From the Eyes of the Cards

_AN: Sorry for the length between chapters. The only time I had inspiration was when I was at work, and by the time I got home, it had left me. Think of this more as a 'filler' of sorts. But this chapter will be taking a break from the psychics and looking at the cards._

_Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing._

Outside Lisa's home, two beings were hovering, finding the open air more comfortable than being inside. For one, there was no need to shrink in size. For the other, the range of vision was farther, allowing a better ability to watch out for the human the Fates had, it seemed, deemed was to be bound to it. For both, it was a much needed chance to stretch their wings.

Despite having free reign to fly as far as they chose, neither strayed very far from the roof of the building their humans were inside. And despite the fact that both were aware that threats could come from any direction, neither were looking away from the two humans, able to watch over them both simultaneously.

Wingweaver's gaze was locked onto Kaiba, a mixture of puzzlement and disdain in her eyes. Her eyes flicked over to the dragon next to her, wondering briefly where the other two were.

"How the mighty have fallen," she said, the first time either of them had broken the silence in over two hours. Wingweaver had emerged from the sixth plane very drained. Restoring life to her human had been a difficult process. Had the Dragon's human been any slower, Lisa would have died, a fact that made her shudder in fear. In truth, it would have been better for her to remain in the sixth plane, the home of all the cards. But she did not dare leave Lisa unwatched. She was far more durable than the human, despite the psychic's strength. A fact that had never been driven home so strongly as now.

"I have not fallen, Fairy," Blue Eyes growled. "I will thank you to stop saying I have."

"Not you," Wingweaver answered, almost laughing. "Your human. So mighty all those years ago. Despite the human you were currently bound to then, you still managed to bestow favor on High Priest Seto. Many looked with favor on him. His power was not something to ignore. Even I favored him above the others."

"You? I thought you preferred the Pharaoh," the dragon answered, surprised. They had all bestowed their favor on one or the other, and back in Egypt, the Fairy next to him had always seemed to have her eyes on the Pharaoh more than his priests.

"The Pharaoh? Don't be ridiculous," Wingweaver answered, this time actually laughing. "He was claimed by the gods, and I was never fool enough to encroach on their territory. There has only been one that foolish. I am still amazed that the Mage was not struck down by the wrath of the gods. Any other who tried would have most certainly perished."

"So why grant favor to him?"

"In truth, he was a puzzle. We grant our favor to very few, and for good cause. An eternity bound to one being is a dangerous thing. Should we choose to favor one who in the future proves to not be worth that bond, we would still be forced to defend that one. I had considered him to be perhaps worthy of such favor."

"So why did you hesitate? The fact that you are bound to the girl proves that you never looked kindly on him."

"Because in truth, I still do not know what you saw in him to grant your favor so quickly. When he was a young boy, and you were still tied to the girl, you bestowed your favor on him. Haste is unlike you, Dragon. He had the potential, I saw, to be among the greatest. A potential he realized and did grasp, as rise he did. The Favored Six, we called them. But always there was a shadow about him. A shadow that worried me. With good cause, it would seem. Look at him now. Still powerful, but cold even to you." She hesitated, looking at the CEO and seeing for a moment the High Priest whom she had looked favorably upon.

"Does he remember any of it? The time in Egypt?"

"The memories are there," the Dragon answered. "I have been able to unlock them once, and even speak to him, before your human came and awoke his gift. Only rarely did he hear my voice, but it was always there. Whatever your accusations, Fairy, I did my duty to him. Throughout all his reincarnations, I was always there."

"Yes," Wingweaver said. "And as I recall, he betrayed that loyalty. Or have you so easily forgotten your lost brother?" The roar of rage that answered her was, she admitted, justified. They had all felt it when Kaiba had ripped the card that represented the fourth Blue Eyes. The act had been enough to destroy him, and the pain had crippled them all, but none more than the Blue Eyes themselves. Pain and rage had been their response. Such loyalty for years, throughout the many reincarnations they had always been there. And that was how they had been repaid.

"You dare accuse me of forgetting the loss," the Dragon roared. "Always the loss is there. Always felt. But vengeance has already been gotten, and my duty hasn't changed."

Wingweaver nodded at that. The echos of the lost dragon had resonated throughout the plane. Enough so that many of the humans that had been favored came and asked what the problem was, despite not receiving an answer.

But when that part of Kaiba had been banished, he had not first gone to the Shadow Realm, as the Pharaoh had believed. No, he had first gone to their realm, as all those banished to the Shadows do. Rarely did they bother with the passage towards the Shadows, instead choosing to hasten the banished one's journey, so as not to feel the taint that always radiated off of those who are banished. But this time, the monster had destroyed one of their own. Vengeance needed to be gotten. And while all of the cards wanted revenge for their lost comrade, they all conceded that that honor of forever destroying the creature belonged to the remaining three. They had come so close to killing it when the shadows claimed what was theirs.

The screams of rage at being denied the death they were so truly owed echoed almost as long as the death of the dragon had. They did not repeat the mistake of letting the creature exist while they exacted a slow revenge. The shadows were hungry, and were eager to reclaim their lost prey. But that time, the cards were ready. The Light attribute cards held the shadows at bay for as long as they could, leaving the Dragons enough time to claim the death that was so rightfully theirs.

Wingweaver knew that Blue Eyes was right. The part of the human he was bound to that had destroyed his kin had been destroyed. And the rest had a duty to the CEO, whether or not he wanted it, and even whether or not they wanted it. By granting him their favor all those centuries ago, they were bound to his soul for the rest of eternity. The moment Wingweaver granted Lisa her favor, bonding with her soul, she bound herself, for all eternity, to her and her alone. No other human could be granted her favor, though her others could choose to bestow favor on different humans.

"The fact that you got your vengeance is besides the point. Why did you choose so rapidly?" Wingweaver asked.

"Because where you only saw the shadows, I saw the ability to overcome them," the Dragon responded.

"Don't mention shadows," Wingweaver said with a shudder. "I've had too close an encounter with them today." The Dragon next to her gave her a sympathetic glance. He had seen how close the girl was to death.

"From the way she would have died, the Shadows would have taken her," he said. "To die in the planes..."

"I would not have let them have her," Wingweaver said. "It is my right as her soul-card to bond with her fully at her death, and my duty if the Shadows would take her otherwise."

Both monsters broke off from that train of thought. They had seen many humans die over their long lifespans. Humans were mortal, after all, they were not. They had even seen the Shadows take their share of souls, as only rarely would they intervene with it. But it never became any easier to watch.

"You would bond with her fully?" Blue Eyes asked, his surprise at the Fairy's comment driving him to speak. "To lose much of yourself, and much of your human in the process. I do not see how it would be worth it. Either way she would be lost to you forever, and you would lose yourself in the process."

"I will not let the Shadows take her," Wingweaver said.

"Humans reap what they sow. You know this."

"Humans may have created the Shadow Realm, but she did not." The Blue Eyes roared in rage at the reminder, and even Wingweaver felt anger at the memory. As well as sorrow. Because the Shadow Realm may have been created by the humans, but it was their fault that it was so prevalent. When the Meillinum items had been created, they found their world invaded. Forced to bind, in part, with the magics creating them, the items suddenly had the power to grant those with strong enough magic to summon them. But it was never meant to be that way. Psychics had always existed. And there were always those that could communicate with them freely. But it was not meant to be done the way those items could.

The first time humans summoned them, they were unable to fully leave their world. They had assumed that, with this failure, the humans would give up the effort. The small shadow that had formed was unnoticed. Then the humans tried again. And again. The stronger the attempts to summon them were, the more the shadow grew. Until, in order to protect themselves, they sealed it away from their world, their desire to defend themselves leading them to trap it, in part, in the human's world.

When again attempts were made to summon them, they found themselves being pulled through those shadows. The summoners didn't know that what this Shadow Realm was was a cruel mirror of their own beautiful world. All they knew, all they cared about, was that they were finally able to truly summon the monsters whenever they chose.

Throughout the years, they would continually be pulled through those shadows, sometimes nearly losing themselves in it because of the taint that realm held for them. Slowly but surely the taint was spreading to them. They were growing weaker. They knew that if this continued, they would die. In desperation, they revealed the old stone tablets to Pegasus, knowing that the game maker would recognize the similarity to cards. Their hope was that the humans, finding an easier way to use them, would stop pulling them through the Shadows.

Their desperate plan worked. And had an interesting side effect. Knowing the power in names and images, they had assumed that, even through the cards, they would be summoned at the human's will. Instead they watched the humans 'duel' as they called it, and felt nothing. For a time, they had the bliss that was only communicating with the psychics who were able to sense them. The times of them being summoned were fewer now than they had been in a long time. Their desperate plan worked, even though the one who brought about was just as guilty of tainting them as the other item holders. Over time, their strength returned, though they doubted they would ever be as strong as they once were.

"You would not let the Shadows take your human should he die in the planes," Wingweaver said after a long period of silence. None of them were sure why, but they did know that if a psychic died in the planes, their soul would not be reincarnated. Instead the Shadow Realm took it, and they were lost forever. It was something that none of the cards wished to happen. More than one had chosen to merge with the soul rather than let it be lost forever. The bond between human and soul-card was more than just a partnership. There was genuine love for the humans they bonded with. Yes, bonding with a soul did mean that both human and monster were never the same. But the alternative was too terrible to imagine.

"What is your human doing?"

At Wingweaver's question, both monsters turned their eyes onto Kaiba. He was standing in front of Lisa, apparently making certain that, yes, he was alive. As odd as that was, it wasn't a problem. The problem was, Kaiba was still asleep and in his borrowed bed at the same time.

_AN: All right, explanations. Here's hoping it won't be as long as last chapter:_

_I read Mellinium World (and if any of you wonderful people can correct me on my spelling of 'millenium' I'd appreciate it) once, and while I loved it and do personally view it as how the Dark Magician came to be, to suite the needs of my story, all the monsters had already existed, in the forms we know them today._

_Saying that the Blue Eyes could always speak to Kaiba is, in fact, cannon. Of a sorts, at least. If you'll recall Battle City, when Kaiba was against Ishizu, right at the end when he was about to summon Obolesk, he hesitated, because it was almost like his cards were calling out to him, saying that he should use the one card that had never failed him, over the God Card. So I'm not breaking anything, I'm even keeping them in character. :D_

_The line 'though though her others could choose to bestow favor on different humans.' is a reference to the fact that Wingweaver is not a unique card. At least one other person knows of the card and, I believe, has used it. Different versions of the same card can bond with different people, and very rarely multiple versions of the same card will all bind themselves to one person, as in the case of the Blue Eyes cards. And they cannot bind themselves to anyone else. Even after the death of the psychic, the fact that they bonded with their human's souls means they are bound for eternity. Yu-Gi-Oh has reincarnations, meaning that the cards, after the death of their humans, would watch over all the humans and wait for the one that they are bound to be reborn. This means that choosing to grant favor to a person is not a decision they make lightly, and will very often watch the same person for several reincarnations in order to make certain that, yes, this is a person that they want to be bound to for eternity. This one is worthy of it._

_Little bit of a cliffie. Can anyone guess how and why Kaiba is in two places at once? Hope you enjoyed this one._


	13. Soon

__AN: I am so sorry for taking so long. I had zero inspiration and a couple of not-so-good months which combined to sap all inspiration except for a small period of time during NaNo. But without further ado, let's jump back into this.__

__Disclaimer: I own nothing except my Ocs.__

Ray entered Lisa's room to check on her and stopped dead in the doorway.

"Kaiba, what are you doing... here..." Ray had glanced towards the room Kaiba was using and saw that, despite being right in front of him, he was asleep in the guest room.

"I was hoping Lisa could tell me. Since as you noticed, I'm strangely in two places at once."

Ray sighed, realizing just what had happened. "The highest plane for telepaths is the ability to astral project. I thought Tom taught you this." Not giving the CEO a chance to answer, he walked over to a mirror and focused on it. Despite himself, Kaiba was fascinated with how the surface of the mirror warped as Ray focused his psychic powers onto it. When the mirror's surface stilled, he recognized Tom on the other side of it, the walls of the school Lisa had shown him just visible.

"Tom, I thought you said you taught Kaiba everything he needed to know about telepathy?"  
>"I did."<p>

"Then why didn't he know about astral projection?"

"I never said he paid attention." Kaiba blinked in surprise as Tom, who started his sentence in the school finished in the room with them. "What, is he stuck, or something?"

"If you're asking if I know how to return to my body, no, I don't."

"Well that's easy. Astral projection, despite the common belief of it being your soul that's being projected, is really just your consciousness. So all you have to do is focus on your body, and you'll be right back inside it." Tom watched Kaiba try, and then fail to return to his body.

"Hm..." Glancing over at Lisa, he continued speaking. "Maybe simply focusing is too complex right now. The first few projections are always the hardest. Try walking back to your body, and then picturing a doorway back inside that you can walk through." Again, Tom watched, growing more and more concerned, as Kaiba tried and failed to return to his body.

"Well, this is certainly a problem. Sure, telepaths can astral project indefinitely – at least as long as their bodies are safe – but I've never heard of someone being unable to return."

"What did you mean by 'as long as their bodies are safe'?" Ray asked.

"Well, like I said, astral projection is a telepath projecting his consciousness outside of himself. In older days, it's said that kings used the power of telepaths to spy on their enemies since only psychics could see the astral projections, but I digress. His consciousness is still attached to his body, but completely unable to act in self-defense. With no consciousness to direct it, a telepath's body simply lays or sits somewhere, seemingly asleep. A telepath is never more vulnerable than when astral projecting. If Kaiba's body is harmed, and he can't return to it, there's nothing he can do to keep himself safe." Seeing Ray start to ask a question, he shook his head.

"I know what you're thinking, Ray, and it won't work. Attacking Kaiba won't force him to return to his body, it doesn't work like that. He has to consciously return to it.

"By the way, is Lisa okay? Everyone at the school is talking about the card-speaker's attempt to restore the barrier, whatever that means. The few card-speakers that aren't in their rooms are walking around like zombies. And Amy was talking about how you passed out when Lisa vanished from the plains."

Briefly, Ray explained what was wrong with his sister, and how Kaiba had very likely saved her life by bringing her to the plains for Wingweaver to heal. During the explanation, understanding showed in Tom's expression, as well as concern for Lisa, whom he was very good friends with. Glancing at Kaiba, he did a cursory scan of the CEO's mind, much to Kaiba's irritation.

"I see." He laughed slightly. "Looks like all the rumors about you being completely heartless are ill-founded. You can't return to your body because you're worried about Lisa. It was probably that worry that caused you to project in the first place. If a telepath is astral projecting but has something else, anything else, too strongly on his mind, than it's impossible for him to return to his body. It's not difficult to stop projecting, but it does require complete focus, just like anything involving the planes." Glancing over at Kaiba's real body, his brow furrowed in worry. After the ordeal that he had likely gone through to bring Lisa to the first plane, he needed to completely rest just as much as Lisa did. Astral projecting in this state, while not immediately harmful, could have negative affects on his health.

"I don't like it, but I don't think I have much choice in the matter. I'm going to have to risk it," he muttered under his breath. Glancing at Kaiba's real body, he focused on it, forging a telepathic connection. Ray let out a surprised exclamation as Kaiba's astral projection vanished from the room, and Tom breathed a sigh of relief.

"There's never any guarantee of that working. It's possible for one telepath to force another's projection to return to his body, but it's difficult, and extremely risky. I got incredibly lucky that it worked without any complications. Connecting to a projecting telepath telepathically runs a very high risk of both telepaths getting stuck in the planes." After doing a brief scan of Lisa's mind to reassure himself that, yes, she was okay, he turned back to the mirror to leave, asking Ray to reopen the connection to the school.

Before Ray had a chance to focus back onto the mirror, however, it started warping. When the surface cleared, a girl with long, curly dark auburn hair and blue eyes with gold flecks in them appeared, Amy just visible behind her as she was the one who had formed the connection.

"Joan. What's wrong?" Joan Saunders, like Anna, was primary foresight, though Ray suspected that Joan was the stronger of the two.

"I need to speak to the card-speakers."

"You can't. They're asleep, and I don't know for sure when they'll wake up. Just tell me the message and I'll make sure they get it," Ray said. Joan narrowed her eyes in irritation, but Ray also noticed the shadow of what looked like fear. Finally, she nodded her head, accepting the fact that there was nothing she could do about Kaiba and Lisa's state of consciousness and knowing that the message had to be relayed immediately. She just hoped that they would wake up in time to hear it.

"Very well, Ray. The message is this: Soon."

"Soon? What's soon? How soon is it?"

"I've said all I can. Make sure that they get the message." With that, Joan walked off, and before Amy had time to close the connection, Tom teleported through.

Walking over to Lisa's bedside table, Ray went through her deck until he found the card he was looking for. Using the card as a focus, he piggy-backed off of Lisa's primary skill and entered the first plane of the card-speakers, asking the Pyschic Kappa what was soon.

He pulled out after only a few minutes when the Kappa refused to answer. Of all of Lisa's cards, that one was the most likely to talk to him when he dipped into the first plane of the cards. If that card was refusing to speak with him, then he knew that there was no point in trying to ask any of her other cards.

"I wish that Lisa or Amy had told me what it was they were doing with the barrier." He glanced over at his sister worriedly. "Please wake up soon, Lisa. If Joan was rattled enough that it was visible, then whatever it was you were doing with the barrier is going to be worse than you let on."

__AN: Joan Saunders belongs to K5Rakitan, who is in the story as an OC as a thank-you for being the only person to review every single chapter. I hope I did your character justice, and I'll try to work her into other chapters in the future. And for the sake of shameless advertising, if any of you are also on fictionpress, I have a story in progress there under the same account name as this one. Check it out if y'all are so inclined.__


	14. More Explanations

_AN: I have no excuse. I am very, very sorry._

_Disclaimer: I own nothing but my OCs and the plot._

* * *

><p>Ray sat in Lisa's den in relative quiet as he tried to figure out what Joan might have meant while waiting for his sister to wake up. The only thing he could think of was whatever was wrong with the barrier. He didn't see much when he provided a buffer to Amy, but what he did see was startling. He very nearly asked her if they really could make a difference, but didn't dare interrupt her concentration.<p>

The quiet was disrupted by frantic ringing of the doorbell. Opening it, he saw none other than Mokuba standing there.

"Where's Seto?"

"Come on in," Ray said, standing aside. "Your brother's asleep right now, but you can wait for him to wake up. I'll tell you what happened in the meantime."

Explanations had to wait while Mokuba assured himself that, yes, his brother was all right. He then had to reassure him that Lisa, who he'd grown fond of in the weeks that she'd been helping his brother, was all right as well.

"What happened?"

"Well, your brother's simply suffering from exhaustion. He did quite a bit, and it's no wonder he needed his sleep," Ray started. He then sat Mokuba down in the kitchen, with a small meal in front of him, and proceeded to explain everything that he knew about the barrier and what had happened with the repair efforts.

"I don't understand all of it myself. The duties of the card-speakers are unknown to me. But I do know that my sister would have likely died if it wasn't for your brother."

"So I've been told," came the exhausted voice from the doorway.

"Lisa!" The twin concerned exclamations were accompanied by both people jumping to their feet.

"You shouldn't be up," Ray said, ushering his sister to a chair and sitting her down before preparing another plate of food for her.

"As long as I don't overtax myself, I'll be fine," Lisa responded, swallowing two pain-killers before starting on her meal. "And there's no risk of that. If I so much as try to go to even the second plane, Wingweaver will have my hide." After a moment, she turned worried eyes to her brother.

"The barrier. You saw it, right? Did we succeed? I don't remember what happened when my charms gave out."

"You didn't repair it, no," Ray answered. "From what little I heard from the card-speakers, you only strengthened the barrier slightly, buying yourselves time.

"Oh, and that reminds me. Joan contacted me with a message for you. She said that I needed to tell you 'soon' but that was it."

Lisa, already pale, paled even further at the message. Standing up on slightly unsteady legs, she made her way to the back room where she made her charms. Grabbing a few strengthening ones, she put them on, hoping that they would help her recover her strength more quickly.

"What's soon?"

"The barrier," Lisa said, before realizing that Mokuba didn't truly understand. "Mokuba, do you remember when I said that the cards were coming to life?" At his affirmative nod, she continued. "That's not truly accurate. The cards are already alive, and live in their own world. There's a barrier, also called the veil, that separates our world from theirs. Through the planes, they can communicate with psychics such as myself, but their world and ours are kept firmly separate. This keeps us from entering their world, and them from entering ours.

"The Dartz incident must have weakened the barrier."

"I've been wondering about that," Mokuba interrupted. "How did you know about Dartz? No one involved told anyone about him."

"Wingweaver told me," Lisa said. "The cards all knew who it was that tried to interfere with their lives, and had no problem telling psychics that they were connected to.

"As I was saying, his interference seems to have weakened the barrier. The cards believe that he forcibly opened a door in the barrier by creating a rip in it. We thought it had repaired itself when things settled down. Card-speakers like myself were too drained psychically to check the barrier, and in truth it's located at the very edge of the sixth plane, and touches the world of the cards. Going that high in the planes, even with the soul-cards, is dangerous, so we rarely venture to check on it."

"Why were you drained?"

"We spent the entirety of the incident trying to figure out just what the monsters were doing in our world, and trying to convince them to return, or failing that, not harm anyone. We were only marginally successful. And after everything had resolved itself, none of us were up to so much as entering the first plane for weeks. Checking on the barrier was out of the question. None of us knew about the barrier being weakened until the cards warned us.

"If the barrier is destroyed, again monsters will manifest in this world. And I don't think that the card-speakers will have the strength to try and speak with them." Lisa sighed and put her head in her hands. "I wish that we'd been warned about the barrier immediately. By the time we knew about the problem, the barrier was little more than holes. If we'd known sooner, then we could have tried immediately, with several short attempts instead of the massive one we were resorted to. Hopefully it was enough to allow us to make repair attempts in bursts.

"Joan's message probably means that the barrier will fall soon. But foreseers have a saying 'The future is not set in stone.' Most of them, despite seeing the future on a regular basis, don't actually believe that what they see will definitely come to pass. More than once, they've seen something come about, and it didn't happen. Their visions usually come to pass, but it's possible that they won't. Though Joan does have an incredibly high accuracy rate..." Lisa shook her head and decided to not worry about something she had no control over. Joan's vision would either come to pass or it wouldn't. In the meantime, she could do nothing until she had regained her strength.

A noise from the doorway alerted her to Kaiba's presence.

"Big brother!" Mokuba jumped up and hugged his brother, receiving a small one in return.

"Kaiba," Lisa said, standing up. "Wingweaver told me what happened. I owe you my thanks." Unsurprisingly, Kaiba didn't answer, barely nodding in acknowledgment that he heard her.

"And I might have a way to do so," she added after a moment. "While I'm sure you don't need it, whatever funds my business can provide you in aid of this amusement park that I hear you plan to build are yours. You need only ask."

"Thank you, but I'm sure we can afford it," Mokuba said with a smile. "Besides, you helped my brother not too long ago. You don't owe us anything." Recognizing an argument she couldn't win when she saw one, Lisa nodded in acceptance and dropped the subject.

Instead of searching for another line of conversation, she grabbed a pile of schoolwork and set about the task of completing it all before she had to go back to school. Next to it was a pile of paperwork concerning her business that she needed to complete soon.

"I heard that they finally got the mess cleaned up from the 'freak accident' at school," Ray said with an amused grin on his face when he noticed what his sister was working on.

"I needed an excuse to be out of school for weeks and didn't have enough time to come up with a better one," Lisa said with a shrug, not looking up from her work.

"What are you talking about?" Mokuba asked.

"The pipes bursting," Lisa said. "It wasn't a freak accident like everyone thinks. After all, why would pipes that were in good condition burst for no reason? And why would water take so long to drain? I'm connected to many water-attribute cards. I simply asked for a favor. The fact that they were able to burst the pipes and keep the water level so high in the first place is just more proof that, yes, things are very, very bad right now." She glanced up for a moment to see the surprised and vaguely disbelieving expressions on the brother's faces.

"You can believe or not. It doesn't change the fact that it's true," was all she said on the subject before focusing solely on the work in front of her.

"Hey, can I ask you something?" Mokuba hesitantly spoke up after several long moments of silence. Lisa glanced up briefly and nodded.

"Why is this barrier breaking so horrible? When you mentioned it the first time, you said people would die if you couldn't fix it. But the monsters came before and no one was killed."

Lisa looked up fully at the question and set aside her schoolwork with a sigh. She then grabbed a large piece of paper and three pens, a red one, a black one, and a blue one.

"This is the card's world," she said, drawing a horizontal line about a third of the way down the paper in red. "Every card that you know, and that haven't revealed themselves to humans yet, lives here. It's where they belong."

Jumping down to the bottom third of the page, she grabbed the blue pen and drew another horizontal line. "This is our world. It's where we belong."

Grabbing the black pen, she drew two broken lines. The line above the blue had several gaps, each about twice the length of the tip of the pen. The line below the red had even smaller gaps, and there weren't as many of them.

"These are the card-reader's planes. Technically I should be drawing several more lines with smaller and smaller breaks, but this will do to explain things. In these planes, card-readers can speak with any of the cards they choose, or simply spend time with them. But neither psychics nor cards ever actually leave their own worlds. We just... Telepaths have the ability to astral project. This is similar. We're partially detaching our consciousness from ourselves to do so. How much we detach depends on how high in the planes we go. In the first three planes, I can easily carry on a conversation with a card and a conversation with someone here. In planes four and five, I can still pull it off, but it's much, much harder. In the sixth plane, the only place I'm aware of is the planes. I see nothing here, I hear nothing here, and if someone were to try and attack me, I would be completely vulnerable.

"This has worked for cards and psychics for thousands of years. I've never been told much about this. Wingweaver and the others don't like talking about it. But from what I'm told, around five thousand years ago, humans started interfering with this working system. They managed to force the cards out of their world, through the planes, and into ours. I'm not sure how they found a solution to keep this from happening, at least for the most part, but I do know that it just doesn't happen except for _very_ rarely. I got the impression from the cards that it irritated them that a few humans could still force them into our world, but it was tolerable.

"Then Dartz did something to repeat what had happened so long ago. Cards were ripped from their world into ours. They didn't have a choice in the matter. And it was all that psychics world-wide could do to simply keep a fractured peace until things settled down.

"Now the barrier that keeps their world from the planes is almost destroyed. The barrier separating our world from the planes has always been all but non-existent. No psychic can change that, it's how it was made to be. Cards _cannot_ stay in the planes. Not for very long. And it's difficult for them to remain in their own world when there's no barrier. Psychic Kappa described it once as if there was a metal belt around my waist, and not far away was a large magnet. I _could_ resist the magnetic pull and keep myself away from it, but it would be hard, and it's not something I would be able to do for long. In this scenario, our world is the magnet.

"The cards are _angry_, Mokuba. They've finally found a way to keep themselves from being ripped into our world, and now someone's done just that, and damaged the only thing keeping or world and theirs separate so badly that any day now, they could physically manifest here. I used to love going to the sixth plane. I was close to all of the cards I hold so dear. Now every time I go there, all I can feel is the rage. Rage at Dartz for destroying the peace they finally managed to make for themselves. And more, rage at card-readers who did _nothing_ to stop the barrier from getting to this point. Part of our job is to do just that. Make sure that the barrier is intact. And we've failed at it. The cards I have a connection to love me. They feel no resentment towards me, and shield me from the wrath of cards that do. But the only thing protecting other psychics from their rage is the cards that love them. The sixth plane holds a very uneasy peace, and no psychic knows how long it will last. So we avoid it.

"Before, we managed to shield humans from their rage. But it took so much out of us, that we're all still trying to recover. We _cannot_ do it again. It requires too much strength that we just don't have. Soul-cards might, _might_ heed us if we plead with them to stay their hands. And they _might_ entreat other cards to do they same, and those cards _might_ listen, but that's a lot of 'mights' and even if a hundred cards listen to us, and two hundred cards listen to those cards, there's still so many more that almost definitely _won't_ listen to reason and will simply give into their rage.

"And honestly, as much as I hate it, as much as I don't want my nightmares to come true where cards walk among us and give into their rage and strike the humans who they feel have wronged them... I can't blame them. They were wronged. Blaming them for their anger is like blaming you for being angry at a bully, or trying to defend yourself from harm. We're trying to stop this from happening. But I'm afraid that it's all too little, too late."

Seeing that Mokuba was upset at this, Lisa smiled slightly.

"Don't worry. Even if I can't do anything, your brother is intimidating enough that even without the Blue Eyes White Dragons, cards will likely avoid him. And he won't let anything happen to you. And we're not giving up on the barrier. The other card-readers and I will rest, recover, and then try again."

When Mokuba smiled back, Lisa smiled a little wider, then went back to her school work.

"_Mokuba will probably be safe. I just hope we can keep the rest of the humans safe."_ Surreptitiously glancing at her multi-colored prism in a nearby mirror, she saw that it was cracked down the center.


End file.
